Restoring the good name of Adam Jones

If your name is Adam Jones and you are a professional athlete, chances are people do not have a good association with you. Maybe that's because the most well known Adam Jones, commonly referred to as "Pacman", is one of the biggest thugs in the NFL. He is currently suspended from the league for repeated violations of the league's personal conduct policy, including a possible involvement in a triple shooting in Las Vegas last year.

But if you are a 22-year-old outfielder for the Baltimore Orioles, you are doing your best to restore the integrity of that name. This Jones is one of the baseball's bright young prospects, the key component of the trade that sent former Orioles ace Erik Bedard to the Seattle Mariners.

While "Pacman" Jones tries to make his way back to football, Adam Jones has quietly had a solid start for the surprising Orioles, collecting 14 hits in his first 54 at-bats including a homerun. But how unknown is he? It's not often a professional baseball player takes a backseat to another professional athlete AND a musician when you Google his name. Yet despite the relative anonymity, Jones is one of the fresh faces of the future for the struggling Baltimore franchise.

On the other end of the spectrum, "Pacman" Jones (if you hadn't guessed by now, no relation) is the poster child for bad behavior in pro football. He has drawn recent interest from the Dallas Cowboys but has yet to be officially reinstated by the league. Whether or not he continues and ultimately resurrects his troubled career remains to be seen.

In the realm of professional sports there are hundreds of Joneses, from the Atlanta Braves' Chipper to the Seattle Seahawks' Julius to the Philadelphia Flyers' Randy. But there are only a pair of Adams, and they could not seemingly be more opposite. The baseball version is doing his part to make people forget the bad memories of the football version.