ATLANTA -- When Ted Williams -- the last Major Leaguer to hit .400 over the course of an entire baseball season -- hit .406 in 1941, the Braves were 49 years away from making Chipper Jones the top selection in the 1990 First-Year Player Draft.

Now nearly two full decades later, 67 years have passed since Williams achieved this hallowed mark. Legendary pure hitters like Tony Gwynn and George Brett never matched The Splendid Splinter's accomplishment. Thus, just six weeks into the season, Jones finds himself much more of a realist than a dreamer.

For nearly two full seasons, Jones has been in an incredible zone and now has the privilege to boast about his Major League-best .410 batting average. But the Braves third baseman says he hasn't even allowed himself to think about chasing the .400 mark, which provides occasional flirtation in May and distraught frustration as the summer progresses.

"[Hitting] .400 is not a concern for me," Jones said. "You're going to run into enough Rich Hardens and Johan Santanas to keep that from happening. If I had hit .390 before in my career, then maybe. But I haven't. When you're a .310 career hitter, you usually hit .310."

Obviously Jones isn't planning to encounter the type of tailspin that would lead him to end this season with a mark similar to the .307 career batting average that he carried into it. Nor is there any recent history that shows he's destined to endure the consistent frustrations that would carry him down this path.

In fact, it could easily be argued that when he's been on the field over the course of the past two years, nobody in baseball has been more consistently successful. Dating back to June 23, 2006, Jones leads all Major Leaguers (minimum 900 plate appearances) in batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage.

What has to be accounted for during that span is the fact that injuries have limited him to just 225 games. While recording the second-best on-base percentage during this span to Albert Pujols, the Cardinals first baseman has played in 291 games.

Still, even though he made one trip to the disabled list last season, Jones' injury problems have diminished since the end of the 2006 season. Some of his teammates believe his current success is a product of the fact that he's been able to avoid the injuries that forced him to miss extended periods earlier this decade.

"He's staying away from the prolonged absence, which helps him stay in a groove," Braves pitcher John Smoltz said. "He hasn't done anything different. He's just mentally locked in."

Whether taking his powerful, picturesque swing from the left side or launching his more compact swing from the right side, Jones still has the same mechanics that have followed him throughout his rise to become one of the greatest switch-hitters ever. He is the only switch-hitter to have a .300 career batting average and at least 300 homers.

"As a younger guy early in my career, I asked him several times about switch-hitting because it's tough -- how to go about it and maintaining his swing from both sides of the plate -- and he was very helpful to me in trying to figure out the right side," Astros first baseman Lance Berkman said. "He gave me some good advice on how to be a switch-hitter at this level."

Even with all of the success Jones has realized this season, he certainly wouldn't be considered the clear-cut favorite to win the National League MVP Award. With Berkman putting up equally impressive numbers, the Braves vet wouldn't even be clearly considered the NL's most valuable switch-hitter.

After recording a pair of hits on Sunday, Berkman kept his batting average at .399. He also leads the Majors in homers (16) and slugging percentage (.816). His .478 on-base percentage is slightly better than Jones' (.475) and just behind Cardinals first baseman Albert Pujols' (.493).

Jones, whose .679 slugging percentage ranks second in the Majors, has been keeping tabs on his competition. Before Sunday afternoon's game, he asked, "What did Berkman do last night?"

"I think it's a mutual admiration society if he's watching me, because I know every time he's having an at-bat, I always stop to watch him hit, because he's one of the best," Berkman said.

Although he lost his bid for his first career batting title on the regular season's final day last year, Jones' current pace has certainly caused some surprise. Through the first 40 games he's played in any of his previous 13 full seasons, he's never hit better than .333. In fact, there have been just four previous times when he's been hitting at least .310.

But now Jones is the first Major Leaguer in seven years to be hitting over .400 through his team's first 43 games. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the last time it happened was 2001, when Red Sox outfielder Manny Ramirez and Twins first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz briefly flirted in this exclusive neighborhood.

Whether it's Braves hitting coach Terry Pendleton, his manager Bobby Cox or Smoltz, those who have spent the better part of the past two decades with Jones can't really explain why he's found so much more consistency the past two years.

Pirates first baseman Adam LaRoche, who is one of Jones' closest friends, believes the Braves third baseman has simply reached the point in his career where he's been able to mix some patience with the vast knowledge he has about pitchers he has seen in the past.

"I can't think of a tougher out in the league right now," LaRoche said. "He's not really a free-swinger. He'll take his walks. He's very patient, knows the situation. He's a guy that's been around a long time and has really figured it out. He's figured out what works for him."

While Jones was growing up, his father, a collegiate baseball coach, told him many stories about Mickey Mantle, who is widely considered the greatest switch-hitter ever. Mantle said that he went to the plate looking to homer during every at-bat and Jones admits he has spent most of his career with this same approach.

But some of the consistency he's gained recently has come from the fact that he understands his capabilities against some pitchers. In other words, when facing Brandon Webb and seeing nothing but filthy sinkers, he's less apt to swing for the fences.

"Earlier in my career, every time I walked up to the plate, I tried to take everybody deep," said Jones, who enjoyed 30-homer campaigns in five of his first six Major League seasons. "Now I realize that there are certain guys that I can't take deep. I just take what they give me."

Even though he's struggled through this season's first six weeks, Mark Teixeira has provided some protection while hitting behind Jones. Knowing Teixeira's potential as a powerful switch-hitter, opponents are often challenging Jones and paying the price.

Since Teixeira arrived as a trade-deadline acquisition last July, Jones has hit .368 (129-for-351).

"I saw Chipper play in high school, and his swing has always been great from both sides of the plate," said Cox, who was the general manager when the Braves took Jones in the 1990 Draft. "He's got that nice swing and when he makes contact, he can send the ball 450 feet."

While many of the Braves say Jones hasn't made any mechanical adjustments, their former center fielder, Andruw Jones, says that Chipper has managed to reduce the number of times he gets jammed with inside pitches.

"Now he gets good wood on the inside pitch," Andruw Jones said. "I've hit behind him and in front of him and he's unbelievable. I've never seen a switch-hitter like him. They talk about Mantle, but I never saw him. He's up there with him or Eddie Murray or any of them. I hope he keeps it up."

Jones' personal history and the game's rich history provide strong reason to believe his batting average will dip below .400 long before he begins to face the pressure presented to George Brett, who was hitting exactly .400 on Sept. 19, 1980. While recording 14 hits in his final 46 at-bats, Brett's average dipped to .390.

"The law of averages are stacked against [Jones]," said Braves 300-game winner Tom Glavine. "But who knows? You never know. It might happen again someday, and who is to say he's not the guy? If you're going to pick a guy to do it, I'd either pick a guy like him, a switch-hitter who hits line drives from both sides of the plate, or I'd pick a guy who is typically a contact hitter and has a little more speed, allowing him to rely on more infield hits."

That second category points directly at Mariners outfielder Ichiro Suzuki. But while further illustrating the difficulty of .400, Jones quickly pointed out that when Suzuki recorded a Major League record 260 hits in 2004, he batted .373.

"It's going to take somebody like an Ichiro, somebody who doesn't have to rely on driving the ball into the outfield to get hits," Jones said. "You need somebody who is going to leg out 50-60 hits a year. I'm going to leg out two."

Another memorable bid for .400 occurred in 1994, when Gwynn hit .403 in the 51 games he played after June 16. But when a players' strike ended the season on Aug. 11, the Padres legend was three hits shy of a .400 average.

Many believe Gwynn, who also hit over .400 through July 14, 1997, had the best chance of actually hitting .400 over the course of an entire season.

"Gwynn was one of the greatest hitters in the game," Smoltz said. "Chipper does have an advantage from the standpoint that as a switch-hitter, he gets to see all of the dominant pitchers from the side of the plate that would give him a little bit of help. The opposite theory is that it's hard to keep two swings going."

Pendleton, another switch-hitter who won the NL MVP Award in 1991, marveled that Jones has found this level of consistency while having to keep his swing fine tuned from both sides of the plate.

"He's just been unconscious lately," Pendleton said. "To do that from both sides of the plate for this long is an extremely difficult thing to do."

Jones hasn't shown favor to either side. He's hitting .426 (26-for-61) against left-handed pitchers and .400 (38-for-95) against right-handers. Entering the season, he showed this same consistency, owning a .308 career average against right-handers and a .305 mark against left-handers.

Whether Jones' ability to hit to all fields and willingness to patiently approach at-bats allows him to prolong his bid for .400 deep into the summer remains to be seen. But it's obvious that already, he's taken his game to an unforeseen level.

"If there was ever a switch-hitter in the history of the game who could do it, he would be one of the two or three that I think could," Berkman said.