(Pete Peterson)

Itchy Jones is the winningest baseball coach in the history of Southern Illinois University-Carbondale and led the Salukis to three appearances in the College World Series.

He had such a legendary coaching career at SIU-C, the baseball stadium on campus bears his name and the program recently retired his uniform number 1.

In this edition of Reading Baseball, Pete Peterson remembers the time Jones became a cover boy when the SIU Press reprinted a critically-acclaimed baseball book.

Reading Baseball is a series of essays and commentaries by Richard “Pete” Peterson, author of Growing Up With Clemente and the editor of The St. Louis Baseball Reader, now available in paperback.