Closing Shot
Closing Shot: Baseball Lifer
After playing and working in baseball since 1949, Jack McKeon says, “I think I’m going to pack it in,” and maybe exchange diamonds for beaches.
Jack McKeon smokes a cigar while skippering the Marlins in 2003, the year they rose from underdog status to World Series champions.getty images
The Bartman Game is 20 years old this month, a geek — not Greek — tragedy that has been dissected and 30 for 30’d for two decades. But the manager in the opposing dugout that night, known for blowing (cigar) smoke, is the other side of that infamous story. He is Jack McKeon, now 92 years young, who after 72 summers in baseball gets to retire with a plum-sized World Series ring on his finger.
Few men have been in the game since 1949, but McKeon is the living, breathing definition of “Baseball Lifer” — meaning he’s been a player, manager, scout, general manager, roving instructor or consultant since Harry Truman was president. He missed just three seasons all those years (two while in the military and one after getting fired for some no good reason he can’t recall), but come the end of this year’s Fall Classic, he says he’s leaving his job as Washington Nationals special assistant. It’s true: He’s finally hanging up the gut feelings.
“I think I’m gonna pack it in,” McKeon said. “What the hell, it’s going on 73 years now. I just look at the farm clubs, anyway. I go to spring training. But you get beat up with the travel so I just thought maybe, ‘Hey, see what it’s like to go to the beach once in a while.’”
The man made his living on hunches and storytelling. The only analytic he cared about was his instinct. Give him a scouting report heavy on metrics, and he’ll Steph Curry it into the trash. It may not be the way of the current world, but it was the way of McKeon’s when he won his lone World Series title for the Marlins in 2003.
Given little chance to defeat the 100-win Giants in the NLDS, McKeon stood in front of his team, hands in his back pockets, and said: “Look, ain’t no pressure on us. Pressure’s on them guys.” After the Marlins won in four, he reprised the speech before the NLCS against the Cubs. Which is when fan Steve Bartman (wearing headphones and perhaps oblivious to his surroundings) interfered with an eighth-inning foul ball that Cubs left fielder Moises Alou believes he could’ve caught. A botched double play then led to an eight-run Marlins rally and a trip to play the Yankees in the World Series. McKeon wasn’t giving it back.
Before the clinching Game 6 in New York, McKeon started Josh Beckett on three days rest — just a gut feeling. Reporters cited endless stats to him that pitchers rarely succeed on short rest, and he just blew his cigar smoke back at them (says he smoked 200 cigars that series alone). When Beckett won, McKeon opened his press conference with: “Any questions about three days rest?”
Now he can finally walk away, having answered every baseball question imaginable. He mows his 15-acre yard in Elon, N.C., on his tractor every day — “for exercise” — and, otherwise, watches his great-grandchildren play baseball. He finally stopped with cigars 13 years ago after double bypass surgery, but carries some around as a prop in case someone wants a photo. He’ll chew one for a second, and that’ll be that.
Asked for his secret to long life, he says, “Good whiskey,” and thinks he’ll have a sip next month when he turns 93. Which, come to think of it, is the only metric that matters.
