In less than two weeks the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame will be inducting several baseball stand-outs including former St. Louis Cardinal pitcher Jason Isringhausen and long-time Kansas City Royals groundskeeper George Toma. Mansfield baseball coach Doug Jones is also being honored, and while he's probably the least known of the headliners, the Lions head coach has a heart as big as a lion.
Jones is the winningest coach in the history of high school baseball in Missouri. He has over 700 victories in his three decades-plus of coaching, most of them at Mansfield where he won two state championships, made six trips to the final four and captured over 20 district titles. All you need to know about the effect Jones has had in the community is that the field is named in his honor.
"You have to have talent and you have to have people but winning is an attitude," explained Doug's assistant coach and former player Gary Greene. "And coach Jones epitomizes a winning attitude. He's everything to Mansfield baseball and this community loves him as much as he loves it. Nobody better I'd rather go to battle with I can promise you that."
And these days that fight like a Lion attitude that Jones brought to Mansfield is being manifested in an even more important way. In January Jones was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor and after surgery to remove it, he had to undergo chemo and radiation treatments. Yet he's never missed a practice or game yet.
"Yes, I am a little stubborn from that aspect," Jones admits. "There's some days I would have liked to have called in and said I'm not really too enthusiastic about coming in today but hopefully you don't let your teammates down and I've got a lot of teammates. Every one of these kids I consider my teammates."
"From the start it was we're gonna win it," Greene continued. "And he emphasized the 'we' which meant all of us his baseball family."
"Without the support of all the people we had who prayed for him we couldn't have possibly gotten through this ordeal," added Doug's mother Avenail.
"This recent experience has taught me more than anything else I've ever had in my life how important it is to be blessed and look at every day as a gift from God," Jones said.
That gift includes being able to coach a sport he's followed since falling in love with Mickey Mantle's Yankees as a young boy.
"When he was 18 months-old he could tell you every Yankee player," his mom remembers.
And although he didn't land in Cooperstown like the Mick, Jones is about to land in his home state's Hall of Fame.
"This is the greatest recognition and honor that I've ever had," he said.
And hopefully a lot more wins including the biggest one of all.
"We just hope he can lick the battle of cancer," Avenail said. "And enjoy a few more years here."
