ATLANTA It's a brilliant blue September afternoon, and the mood around the Turner Field batting cage is loose. The Braves have just clinched yet another postseason berth, and all is right in the world as they play out the regular season. Terry Pendleton, the 1991 NL MVP, is here tossing a baseball, a few steps from John Schuerholz, the architect of the Braves' record run of postseason appearances. All-Star outfielder Ron Gant is nearby, and somewhere in the depths of the stadium, Chipper Jones is talking to a local radio station about What It All Means. Pearl Jam's "Evenflow" is blaring over the stadium PA, and if you squint hard really hard, because Turner Field didn't even exist when "Evenflow" was released you can imagine that it's the early '90s again

Chipper Jones has made the playoffs in 14 of his 19 seasons with the Braves. (AP)But it's 2012. Terry Pendleton is a coach tossing batting practice. John Schuerholz has ceded the general manager's office, and his once-black hair is now full-on gray. Ron Gant is in a suit, preparing to broadcast the ballgame for a local network. And the line of flags commemorating Atlanta's postseason appearances stretches the length of the high-end luxury club that would have been unthinkable way, way back in 1991.

Only Chipper Jones is still playing ball, the last remaining link to one of the great, if underachieving, dynasties in baseball history. Fittingly enough, his career will end the way it began: a Braves trip to the postseason.

It was a simple play, really; the proverbial "doesn't-show-up-in-the-box-score" move that speaks volumes.

Twenty-two years ago, Jones was one of dozens of ballplayers sweating in the rookie league in Bradenton, Fla. He was surrounded by players headed up, players headed down, players headed nowhere at all. On this day, he was at first base with one out in the inning. The batter hit a sharp grounder to the first baseman, who reasonably enough stepped on first to get the runner and fired a throw to second, presumably to nail Chipper with 30 feet to spare.

[Related: Chipper Jones' 10 best "Natural" moments]

But things didn't work out that way. Chipper had deked toward second and walked casually back to first after the ball was gone. The first baseman could have tagged the kid out if he'd just looked, but Jones, just weeks out of high school, had outthought everybody on the field.

"You don't see this kind of instinct in the Rookie League," former Braves coach Bobby Dews later told Schuerholz. "In my entire baseball career, I'd only seen the play twice before. Once by Mickey Mantle and once by Pete Rose."

"This is a guy, who as a youngster, demonstrated great physical ability," Schuerholz said recently, "but more importantly, the uncanny ability to be better in tough situations, to deliver the goods when the game was on the line, when the circumstances were the most difficult and the pitcher was the best he had faced all day. He demonstrated at a very young age that he could succeed."

"Oh, we all knew about Chipper," laughed Gant, who was just entering his prime when Atlanta drafted Jones in 1990. "We'd hear about what he was doing in the minors. First time I met him was at batting practice. He was swinging this little toothpick bat, and I said, 'Kid, you need to be swinging a man's bat.' I gave him one of my 36-[inch], 33-[ounce] bats, and he's been using it ever since."

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As Chipper Jones bids farewell, he leaves behind legacy of success