Walk like a duck, Andy! Do the duck-walk, Andy! If he lost a bet to Henry, that's all he'd hear about. Duck-walks. He'd have to pay up in duck-walks. He'd have to squat down like a catcher, put his weight on his toes and giddy up. He'd have to duck-walk around the bases, knuckles scraping the dirt, and only then would Henry let him go. The duck-walk is going to get you off this island someday, Andy! The duck-walk will make you strong, Andy! The duck-walk will get you to the major leagues, Andy!

If Henry said it, Andy believed it. As far as Andy was concerned, Henry was the original centerfielder. The only centerfielder. He couldn't believe the legs Henry had. These were the legs the whole island talked about. These were the legs that could not be slowed even by a broken bone. The way the story goes, Henry scaled a centerfield wall to make a catch one day and landed rudely on his right foot. "Jesus, now I've done it," Henry said. The island doctors called it a fracture, put a cast on it and told him he'd miss six weeks. But a day later, he took batting practice wearing the cast. A week later, he took the damn cast off. Another day later, he went to the beach to toss hot sand on the bone. "This will fix it," he said. Another day later, Henry stood in centerfield.

These were the legs Henry wanted his son to have, his son Andy. All through Andy's childhood, from ages 9 to 15, they would play volleyball, and the loser would have to duck-walk. They would play table tennis, and the loser would have to duck-walk. They would play one-on-one on a rim made out of a bicycle wheel, and the loser would have to duck-walk. They would swim races to the bottom of the ocean, and the loser would have to duck-walk. Henry would aim fastballs at his son's ribs -- to teach him not to fear the ball -- and if Andy cried, he'd have to duck-walk. In his free time, Andy would have to throw a tennis ball in the air and catch it -- even in bed -- or else he'd have to duck-walk. "Duck-walks help the under part of the body," says Henry, now 55 and a mechanical engineer. "Duck-walks give you a good base. If you have no base, your house will fall down. No house should ever fall down."

By the time he was 15, Andy could duck-walk from home plate to second base faster than anyone on the island -- and he'd blossomed into a magnificent shortstop.

"You've got to come see this player -- he's better than Henry Jones," someone said to one of the island's top scouts.

"Well, he couldn't be better than Henry Jones," the scout said.

"It's his son."

"Okay, maybe," the scout said.

Not long after that, the Atlanta Braves sent their own scout to the island. The scout asked Andy and another player to run a 60-yard dash. A 45-year-old man interrupted them. "I would like to run too," the man said.

It was Henry, of course. Dressed in a full baseball uniform. "I had not run in six months," Henry says. "But I stretched twice, and took off my uniform. Had my running pants on underneath."

Henry started quickly -- "All they saw was smoke," he says -- but Andy passed him and beat him. The Braves then asked Andy to get his glove and take the field. But they were shocked when he did not jog out to play shortstop.

Instead, Andruw Jones nodded at Henry and went straight to centerfield.

***

It is 10 years later, and Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine cannot believe the legs Andruw Jones has. They have heard about Willie Mays, of course, but they do not believe anyone could have covered more ground than their centerfielder. Their centerfielder from the island. Their centerfielder they know nothing about.

The island of Curaçao, down in the Caribbean, is full of secrets, and the sweetest secret of all is how Henry Jones built a baseball player in his own image.

Watch Andruw Jones in Wrigley Field. The wind is blowing in and then out, and fly balls are stumping all of the outfielders -- except Andruw Jones. That is because of what Henry taught him. That is because Henry used to feed him fly balls every day near a beach in Curaçao, where the wind never sleeps. "When I see a fly ball in the wind here, it is easy compared to back home," Andruw says. "It doesn't matter, I catch it here. But down there, the wind is every day. You hit a pop fly there, you go back, you go forward, you go sideway. Not like a knuckleball, but it's moving."

Watch Andruw Jones in short centerfield. He plays so shallow, it's as if he's in a weekend softball league. "I turn around sometimes," says Braves shortstop Rafael Furcal, "and I say, 'Andruw, what are you doing in the infield?' And he will say, 'Don't worry. If it gets over my head, it's a home run. But if it stays in the stadium, it's an out.'" That is because of what Henry taught him. That is because Henry taught Andy to always cheat in to take away the bloop hit. In fact, Henry gave him the six keys to covering every crevice of centerfield: 1) Read the catcher's signs, so you know what pitch is coming; 2) react even to foul balls, so you can better judge the fair balls; 3) run to fly balls with your head perfectly still, to give you better vision; 4) after you've gauged where the ball is headed, take your eyes off the ball and sprint to that spot in a straight line; 5) find the ball again; 6) catch it like you used to catch tennis balls.

"Well," says Andruw, "if you see me play very shallow, that means I am feeling very good that day. Like no ball can go by me. It's the way Michael Jordan feels when he knows he won't miss. Same thing."

Watch Andruw Jones swan-dive for baseballs. In Montreal this May, Glavine had a 2-0 shutout with two outs in the bottom of the ninth when Wil Cordero pasted one to the left-center gap with a man on second. "I was like, 'Game over -- we're gonna lose,'" rightfielder Gary Sheffield says. Except Andruw laid out to catch it. "If I'd have done that, I'd have needed surgery on my shoulders," Sheffield says. Jones didn't, because of what Henry taught him. Henry taught Andy to give up his body. "That is why I used to take him out hunting," Henry says. Specifically, Henry would take Andy out into the island woods to hunt iguanas. They would use slingshots to startle the iguanas out of their trees, and Andy's job was to capture the iguana in his hands and hold it in his shirt. "Ask Andy to show you the iguana bite he still has on his chest," Henry says, chuckling.

Watch Andruw Jones in the 1996 World Series at Yankee Stadium. This is the place he first made a name for himself. This is the place where, at the age of 19, he smashed home runs in his first two World Series at-bats -- the youngest major leaguer ever to go deep in a Fall Classic. But that also was because of what Henry taught him. Henry started his son in baseball at the age of 2, and by 9 he had Andruw practicing with men's teams. By the '96 Series, Andruw actually considered himself an old man. "Where I come from, 19 is ancient," he says.

Watch Andruw Jones in his Buckhead, Ga., condominium. He is in his living room, gripping a heavy sledgehammer with two hands, twisting the handle back and forth, back and forth. Henry taught him this, too. This is how Henry used to strengthen his wrists in Curaçao. And this is why Andruw can wrist balls for home runs now, and why he is going to hit 30 again this year and why he'll drive in 100 runs again. And this is why he went to Home Depot to buy a new sledgehammer a couple of weeks ago. And this is why Braves manager Bobby Cox thinks he can be another Sammy Sosa at the plate. "Sixty home runs three times?" Andruw says. "Maybe someday."

Watch Andruw Jones in an Atlanta courtroom last year, during the Gold Club scandal. He is being asked about his sexual escapade with two women -- entertainers from the club -- in the winter of 1996-97 and, for the first time, his image is being tarnished. This is because of what Henry did not teach him. This is because Henry, for all his wisdom, did not know one single thing about the big city. And this is why, if Andruw Jones is ever going to become Sammy Sosa, he needs someone to take over for Henry. Someone here.

***

Toto, we're not in Curaçao anymore. Andruw Jones was raised on a series of dares -- Bet you can't jump and touch this tree branch, Andy! -- but his biggest challenge now is to resist the pull of the big, bad city.

He is probably the best all-around player on baseball's best team, but he also is what he is: a naïve 25-year-old who is almost too dependent on a man thousands of miles away.

Henry Jones watches nearly every Braves game on the Superstation, but when the game goes off the air, he is left with nothing. If Henry were in Buckhead, if he could supervise Andy's life the way he used to, he'd have Andy early to bed and early to rise. But Andruw Jones is always up late. When he first got to Atlanta, God knows what he'd be doing after midnight. Henry certainly didn't. All Henry knew was that when he turned on the television and watched the Braves play a day game, Andy was always sluggish. "I would call him and say, 'Wake the body,'" Henry says. "I'd say, 'Listen, the spirit never sleeps, but the body does. Wake the body.' But he never gets up early. When I'm there, he does get up. But I am not always there."

It is the one problem Henry has: He is not around to make his son do the duck-walk any longer. But Henry seems to have gotten lucky, seems to have found someone who can get through to Andruw when he cannot.

Her name is Nicole. She's wearing Andruw's ring.

Nicole Derick of Marietta, Ga., and Henry Jones of Curaçao have had long talks, and they have one common goal between them: to make sure the Curaçao in Andruw Jones never leaves.

Nicole, who will marry Andruw in November, has been down to the island herself, and she knows that Henry is Andruw, and Andruw is Henry. She has seen the dirt field Andruw grew up on, and she has felt the wind that makes those fly balls dance, and she has seen the iguana scar on Andruw's chest. She has walked in the 100° sand there, and has heard Andruw say, "If I could be like anyone in the world -- living or dead -- I would choose to be like my father."

So she intends to preserve it all. Forget the Gold Club. That was nothing but naïveté. He was 19 and he just didn't understand it was wrong to have sex with two women while someone else watched. "I wish people would stop bringing that up," Nicole says.

"Any guy, whether he says so or not, would do what he did."

But in the days since, Nicole has helped teach Andruw the one thing Henry could not: how to survive Atlanta. And LA and Houston and New York. They survive it together by staying in. By playing with their Xbox. By planning a family. They want kids as soon as a year from now, and Andruw has told Nicole that he wants to raise them the way Henry raised him.

In other words, they will all do the duck-walk.

She wants Andruw to buy a villa in Curaçao and continue conducting clinics for the local kids down there, the kids who shag fly balls in that perpetual wind. So long as Andruw is connected to that wind, to that hot sand, to the iguanas, to the duck-walks, to his father, Henry Jones need not worry anymore about his son in the big, bad city.

Andruw, even to this day, checks in with Nicole before every Braves game, a minute before he takes the field, and always asks, "Are you watching?"

But he doesn't have to call Henry, because he knows Henry is watching. Henry is still Henry. It is Henry who still tells him to swing hard at fastballs and not as hard at sliders. It is Henry who will never change.

But it is also Henry whose job is done now. It is Henry who knew he could relax the minute he heard what position Nicole used to play in softball: centerfield.

It's the family business.

This article appears in the September 2 issue of ESPN The Magazine.

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