DETROIT -- The Tigers' clubhouse was understandably quiet after Sunday’s 8-4 loss to the Reds. Jahmai Jones sat and reflected, a light blue bat sitting in his locker for Father’s Day. It’s the bat he used to homer in the third inning to open the scoring, his second home run in eight games as a Tiger and third in his Major League career.
Jones hit his first big league homer on Mother’s Day last year with the Yankees and kept the bat. This one might have been more emotional, as his face showed as he crossed home plate and pointed to the sky.
“Today's obviously an emotional day for me,” he said, “especially being in Detroit.”
This is where his late father, Andre Jones, got his opportunity in the NFL as a linebacker for the Lions in 1992. Jahmai wasn’t alive to see his dad play, but he has reminders, from VHS videos to trading cards. He can’t go to where his dad played; the Pontiac Silverdome was torn down a few years ago. But he got an appreciation of what it meant by watching his older brother, T.J. Jones, play wide receiver for the Lions from 2015-18.
Family ties weren’t the reason Jones signed with Detroit last fall. He wanted a role on a team with a chance to win, and the Tigers needed right-handed bats to help supplement a lineup of young left-handed hitters.
Coming to Detroit wasn’t some way to connect with his father, who passed away in 2011 just as Jahmai was preparing to begin high school. But as Jahmai sat in the clubhouse, the connections were hard to miss.
“I think about him every day,” he said. “I don't know if that ever will go away, especially on days like this and when I start having kids of my own. It's one of those things that you just kind of learn to cope with, but in moments like this, it really just kind of brings a lot back.”
As great of a day as Father’s Day is to be at a ballpark, it’s hard for those who have lost their dad, moreso when Dad had a big influence on a baseball career. Jahmai was the baseball player in a football family, but Andre did a lot to foster his son’s love of the game.
“There were a lot of lessons instilled in us at a young age to try to prepare us for whatever came in life,” Jones said. “And it just seemed like sports was the easiest way to resonate.”
For Jahmai, that includes being a good teammate, which is partly what makes Father’s Day tough for him.
“It's even hard now,” he said after the game. “It's a fun day, but it's a tough day. It's fun to see everybody in the locker room getting to enjoy being first-time dads, first-time Father's Day. So I love that aspect of it. I love my family, so getting to see other guys with their families is always a special day. But just little moments like this, being in Detroit, you wish you had him here.
“It's always a weird day. There's good and there's, I'm not even going to say necessarily bad, because I've been pretty blessed and fortunate to just get to where I've gotten. So it's hard for me to say that I've been slighted on anything. But yeah, just days like this, you miss him a little bit more.”
Jones handles it well because that’s what his dad taught him to do: Flip the switch.
“That's one of the things he kind of told us when we were younger,” he said. “When you get to the field, there's kind of a switch that needs to be flipped on when the game starts regardless of what's going on that day, regardless of what's going on around you. You have a job to do, and so you try to flip that switch on. And then when the game ends, that's when you can deal with everything else and rationalize what's going on.”
That’s what Jahmai was doing. And as he readied to leave the park for the rest of Father’s Day, the homer had clearly impacted him. He didn’t get the ball, but he’s keeping the bat.
“It's going to go next to the Mother's Day bat in my house,” he said. “I've had some pretty special moments being able to do my first career [home run] on Mother’s Day last year. And then being able to get one today on Father’s Day, regardless of how my career goes, if I end up hitting 500 more or I end up hitting no more, the fact that I'll be able to have both of those, it's just special to me.”