Reds draft pick Chad Jones' scars tell his comeback story

• Jones nearly lost his leg%2C needed 19 surgeries on it after getting into a car accident and hitting a pole on June 25%2C 2010
• Three years later%2C former LSU star was taken by the Reds in the ninth round of draft
• He was originally taken by NFL%27s Giants in third round but was waived in 2012

The first thing you notice in the picture is the red: It dominates and it's actually a beautiful, stunning crimson. And then you realize what it is – blood and the inside of a man's leg. To the left, the bones meet at the knee showing the flayed leg that belongs to Chad Jones, covered in blood.

Jones' doctor sent him the photograph three years ago after a 10-hour operation, the first of 19 surgeries on his left leg. He wanted Jones to understand the extent of the damage, and maybe why he perhaps would never walk again.

Last week, another photographer, working for a newspaper, took photos of the leg.

But this time, Jones stood in the major league clubhouse in Goodyear, Ariz., that come February houses the Cincinnati Reds for six weeks during spring training. It's where Jones bared the scars on his leg, and it's where he always wanted to be.

The scar on the inside of his left thigh is gnarled like a large branch cut off an even larger tree years before, weathered by time and healing, but still bearing the signs of age and a severe trauma. The rest of the leg is covered by scars in a way ink covers his arms. This is now Chad Jones' leg, distinctive and full of stories.

The Reds drafted Jones in the ninth round of last month's MLB draft number 285 overall – three years after that accident. He had been on the team's radar since he was a freshman in a New Orleans high school, nearly a decade ago. He is finally in a Reds uniform, in Goodyear working with the Reds' Rookie Arizona League team. This is the lowest level of the minors in the United States, with players either just drafted or finally moving to the U.S. from academies in the Dominican Republic. Here at 24 years old, Jones is more than a year older than his oldest teammate and nearly six years older than one of his catchers.

He's made three appearances so far for the Arizona Reds -- a level of minor-league baseball so low that there are no distinctive nicknames in the league, no cute mascots or even so much as a dizzy bat race. He's here to start his career, to see if he can help the team down the road.

As a high school senior, Jones was one of the country's top-rated athletes, recruited by nearly every school in the country. He came to his athletic prowess honestly.

Jones' father Al Sr. played football at Tulane and his older brother was also a highly-rated recruit who chose to play football at LSU and signed a rookie free agent contract with the Bengals. Although his first love was also baseball, Jones saw coaching icons like Nick Saban and Les Miles come into his house to recruit his brother. He knew there was a future in football. While Jones continued to play baseball, he became a star on the football field.

As a high school senior, Jones was one of the country's top-rated athletes, recruited by pretty much every school in the country. He chose to stay home at LSU. He'd relocated during high school from New Orleans to Baton Rouge as a result of Hurricane Katrina and committed to play football at LSU. He was drafted in the 13th round of the 2007 draft by the Houston Astros, with his status as a star football player dropping his draft status.

"The two best athletes I've ever coached were Jeff Samardzija when I was at Notre Dame and Chad Jones," LSU baseball coach Paul Mainieri said. "The two of them both have that something extra-special, that 'it' factor, that they just loved to play, loved to compete, whatever the sport, whatever the situation. They just love to compete and win."

After three years at LSU, the New York Giants chose Jones in the 2010 NFL Draft, Jones' future was as a professional athlete. The Brewers took him in the 50th round of the draft later, knowing he wouldn't sign, but not wanting to miss out on the slim chance he may still return to the diamond.

In June, he signed a four-year, $2.6 million contract with the Giants and returned home to New Orleans to the new house he'd bought.

THE ACCIDENT

It was an early Friday morning on June 25, 2010 when Jones was driving his new Range Rover in his hometown when the SUV's tire got stuck in a train track, pulled off the road and into a pole. The car was split in half, its front axle grinding on Jones' left leg like a hacksaw.

Darryl Richardson, a family friend and EMT supervisor, responded to Jones' crash and was on the scene that day. He remembers the extreme loss of blood, the possibility of amputation and when talking about the injury today does so in measured medical terms, calling it "significant."

"To be honest with you, I never thought he'd be able to play football or baseball or anything again," Richardson said. "It's totally amazing," Richardson said. "I'm a religious man, and to me it's more evidence that there is a God."

News of the accident – a professional football player and hometown sports star - spread quickly in the neighborhood, with a firefighter on scene who used to be one of Jones' Little League coaches and a police officer who knew him.

Jones' girlfriend, Jade Newman, originally heard that Jones was dead. She rushed to the scene to find Jones leaning back against the headrest of his car, eyes closed as paramedics tried to save his leg. A police officer told her that Jones was alive, but his life was in danger. Newman wasn't thinking about his football career, and she certainly wasn't thinking about his baseball career.

Chad's parents Al Sr. and Patti Jones were in Forth Worth, Texas. A family friend who was a supervisor in the New Orleans Police Department explained that Chad had been in an accident, and it was bad. Jones' parents immediately got in their cars and made the 555-mile drive from Fort Worth to New Orleans.

Patti Jones was desperate to get to see her son, and she and her husband rushed to make sure that they were there when their son awoke. He underwent 10 hours of surgery on that first day. He was in recovery when his parents arrived, his eyes still closed when his mother first saw him. She whispered his name into his ear and he immediately woke up.

Her son was alive, but his journey had been changed forever.

"I tell him, I don't know how you feel. I know he had his life right there in front of him and it was taken away in a flash," Al Jones Sr. said. "Nobody did anything wrong. There was no speeding, no drugs. Nobody was driving recklessly. It was just a freak accident. You can't even blame it on anybody. It was a hard thing to deal with."

Doctors told Jones they were able to save his foot and his leg, but he may never be able to use it again. He wasn't listening. He knew he'd play football again.

Jones doesn't even remember the exact number of surgeries he had, "13 or 14" while he was still in the hospital full-time, and then "two or three" more afterward. The Giants had him transferred to a hospital in New York. After several months there, he returned home to New Orleans, in a wheelchair.

It took seven months before he could walk in a regular shoe, then three more months before he could jog and two more months -- at this time, a full year after the accident -- before he was running.

Still on the Giants' injured reserve list, he was able to be on the field in 2012 as New York won the Super Bowl. But later that year, an infection in his leg necessitated that the metal rod and five screws had to be removed from his foot, and after nearly two years on the Giants' injured reserve, he was released.

That didn't stop him, as he earned tryouts with the Eagles and his hometown Saints. No matter how fast he ran, how he performed in drills, the physical was too much. Teams weren't willing to take a chance on his leg being able to stand up to the rigors of the National Football League.

"I was real excited about getting a chance from my home team," Jones said. "The workout went great, but I still didn't sign. So therefore I decided that since football was going to be another year, there was not enough time for me to get back into football and it was time for me to get back on my feet and doing something. I switched over to baseball."

BACK TO BASEBALL

For the first time in his life, Jones concentrated on baseball. Nick Krall, the Reds' director of baseball operations and LSU graduate, read on the internet that Jones was giving baseball another try. He immediately sent a late-night email to Jerry Flowers, the Reds' regional scouting supervisor who had spotted Jones as a high school freshman, who then set up a private tryout for the Reds.

They were interested. Later, Jones held an open tryout and more teams were there -- as was Flowers. That's when Jones threw 92.

"I texted (scouting director) Chris Buckley and told him the cat was out of the bag," Flowers said.

The baseball draft has 40 rounds and is a three-day affair. The first day consists of the first round and second rounds. Jones knew he wouldn't hear his name on the live TV coverage of the first two rounds and didn't expect to hear it on June 7, the second day, which consisted of the third-through-10th rounds.

That didn't mean he didn't keep his cell phone close. He paid special attention to when the Reds were drafting.

"I thought I'd be 20th to 40th round, if not a free agent," Jones said. "Jerry Flowers called me and asked how I was doing, how I was feeling. He asked me if I was feeling confident and I told him I was, even though I wasn't."

In the ninth round, Flowers called him again. He was a Cincinnati Red.

"He was throwing 88-92 with a good slider, we figured we'd take a shot," Buckley said. "When you're talking about lefties, they're just so hard to get."

Buckley said Jones passed the team's physical, noting it's a different type of physical for a football team than a baseball team -- "nobody's going to be tackling him or cutting his legs out from under him."

In Jones, the Reds see an elite athlete, a competitor and a good arm. Buckley notes the Reds weren't alone -- "The other 29 teams liked him," Buckley said. "He wanted to play in the NFL."

Buckley said the Reds see Jones as an untapped talent. Football was always Jones' main focus, even when he played for the LSU baseball team.

"He's been away from baseball for nearly four years. He's back and throwing," Buckley said. "The thing is even when he was playing baseball at LSU he wasn't training like a baseball player. He came off the football field. We're anxious to see what he can do."

NOW IN ARIZONA

He signed quickly and headed out to the team's complex in Arizona.

There are feel-good stories in the draft. The Arizona Diamondbacks drafted Arizona State outfielder Cory Hahn, who had been paralyzed during a game in 2011, in the 34th round this year. The Rangers and Astros did similar things in recent years. Those are great stories of an organization doing something nice, to boost the spirits of players whose careers were cut short. There is a time for that, and it's not in the ninth round, where the Reds took Jones.

Jones' story is an inspiration, sure, but it's not merely inspirational. Although he played the outfield in addition to pitching at Louisiana State University, his future career lies in a specialized role in the bullpen. The Reds see him in a role known in baseball circles as a "LOOGY" -- or left-handed, one-out guy. The LOOGY comes in late in a game to face a particularly dangerous left-handed batter, (think Joey Votto or Jay Bruce) and if all goes as planned, gets that batter out and his day is done. Most teams have a LOOGY, and even if it's not the most glamorous of roles on a big league team, it's a valuable role, and one that can net a player a good living for a long time.

In his first three appearances with the AZL Reds, Jones didn't face a left-handed batter. He will, in time, because that's what the Reds want. The team thinks he can quickly rise through the long road of the minors possibly even skipping some of the scheduled stops -- from Goodyear to Billings, Mont., to Dayton to Bakersfield, Calif., to Pensacola, Fla., to Louisville, Ky., on to Cincinnati. It's a long journey, one made in many different ways by the players that have come before him, with only the select few making it to Cincinnati. No player has quite the path Jones has taken.

On July 5, three years and 10 days after the accident, Jones was in a competitive game once again.

The last time he'd suited up in a uniform to face another team, he was a safety for LSU, playing against Penn State in the 2010 Capital One Bowl in front of 63,025 at the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Fla., and a national TV audience. It was his first baseball game since the third game of the championship series of the 2009 College World Series. That game was played before 19,986 people at Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha, Neb., and a national TV audience on ESPN.

As Jones warmed up in the bullpen at Goodyear Ballpark in the fifth inning of a game against the Indians, he wasn't nervous. It had nothing to do with the fact there were only about 30 people in the stands and no TV cameras in sight. It was more that here he was, where he was supposed to be, at long last. An athlete competing in a game and nobody caring where who he was or what he was trying to return from -- he was just No. 3, a left-handed pitcher in a low-level minor-league game.

"When I was in the bullpen, I wasn't nervous at all," Jones said. "Once I threw that first pitch, that first strike, that was all I needed -- and then I struck out my first batter. I couldn't have started my career any better."

In the stands, Newman was joined not only by her son, Chad Jones Jr., 5, but also their college friends, Patrick and Antonique Peterson. Patrick Peterson is an All-Pro cornerback for the Arizona Cardinals and Jones' college teammate. Searching Chad Jones on YouTube, there's a video of Jones' 93-yard punt return for a touchdown in a game against Mississippi State in 2009. Jones is wearing the same No. 3 that he now wears for the AZL Reds, and somewhere around the Tigers' 20-yard line, Peterson appears on screen, waving on his teammate, letting him know a touchdown is in sight. On this 106-degree night in Arizona, Peterson's again a spectator, waving his friend on towards his goal.

"Someone asked me at the game, one of the other player's parents asked me what it means to me. I can't explain it. I'm in total shock. He's truly amazing," Newman said. "I call him Superman all the time, because I don't think this is human to be able to do this. There's nothing but blessings is all I can say. For him to go through all this -- to almost literally lose his life -- and come back and be a professional athlete in a whole different sport? I've never heard of anything like it in my entire life. I'm just so happy for him and so proud to him. He's such a positive person. He's always been humble, he's good to everyone. That's why I can say it's a blessing. We've been blessed in the midst of all this."

Rosencrans writes for the Cincinnati Enquirer, a Gannett property.