TRADER JACK : Where There’s Smoke, There’s McKeon, Whether He’s Holding His Cigar or Not

Jack McKeon has traveled a colorful path from his boyhood in South Amboy, N.J., to his current position as the Padres’ general manager. In conversations with The Times’ Tom Friend totaling more than 20 hours, McKeon told tales of his life. In McKeon’s words, this is his story.

Hey, I’ve got this sign I’m thinking about putting up in my office. I think it says, “If you don’t smoke, get the heck out!” Or something like that.

People are always getting on me for smoking my cigars, but it’s an image thing, you know? Photographers come up to me all the time and say, “Hey Jack, I want to take your picture, so where’s your cigar?” Anyhow, I talk pretty good with a cigar in my mouth. You can understand me and everything. Ask some of the teams I’ve traded with. I’m always negotiating with my cigar. Me and my cigar. That would be a hell of a name for a book.

Oh boy, that reminds me. This winter, I was in the process of making that big Kevin McReynolds deal with the Mets, and I went up for a negotiating session empty-handed.

Forgot my cigar.

I felt naked. Sometimes, when I’m talking deals, I’ve got that cigar, and it might be a real strong one, and I’m blowing smoke in your face.

I’m lulling you to sleep. The smoke is my knockout drug. I gotcha.

We eventually made that McReynolds deal, but I had to get my cigars before I could do it.

I started smoking ‘em when I was about 18. I’d just spent my first season in the minors, and we’d sit in the clubhouse puffing away. I came home after the season and was kind of paranoid about my dad. My father was a tough guy, and I think he would have decked me if I started smoking my cigar in front of him. Eventually, I just did it, and he didn’t do nothing. He figured I was on my own now, a professional ballplayer.

My dad is me. I mean, I’m my dad. I mean, we’re a lot alike. I learned so much of my street smarts from him. My dad never got past the seventh grade, but he was the youngest Ford dealer in the United States. He was selling cars at the age of 21. He had his own garage, his own taxi service, his own wrecking business. Here was an original entrepreneur. He was also a justice of the peace in our hometown, South Amboy, N.J.

I’m not kidding. If a guy got a speeding ticket in South Amboy on his way to the shore, the cops would bring the guy to my father’s garage. My dad might be under some car, all greasy in his overalls, and in came the cop. So my dad would towel off, put on his judge robe and walk over to this desk he had in the garage.

He might say to the driver, “That’ll be 30 bucks or 30 days.”

I remember one time, a guy told him, “Well, I don’t have any money, judge.”

“Too bad,” my dad would snap. “Lock him up.”

And, sure, the guy had money. He was going to the shore. So he says, “Uh, uh, uh . . . Let me talk to my wife.”

He got the money.

My dad took off his robe and went back under the car.

That was a great town, South Amboy. About 10,000 people. My uncle Ed was with the police, my uncle Joe was the mayor, and my father was the justice of the peace.

We kind of owned that town.

Actually, my father didn’t want me to be a ballplayer. He thought I should open a laundromat or be a funeral director. In those days, you couldn’t make a living playing ball. He was thinking in my best interest, and he thought a funeral director would be a pretty good job in our town.

But I did every job imaginable in that town. I delivered mail. Jack the mailman, how do you like that? I used to change tires on fire trucks. I used to drive my dad’s wrecker. Later in life, I opened a drive-in restaurant and I used to officiate basketball games. I did it all. A Jack-of-all-trades.

THE PLAYER

People always ask me when I learned how to evaluate talent.

I say a real long time ago.

I evaluated me.

I was a fat little catcher. I might have hit pretty well in high school, but I couldn’t hit my weight in the minors, which was pretty hefty, by the way. My batting average fluctuated between .217 or .221 or .223, and my weight fluctuated at a little higher level.

I hit three ways: Right, left and seldom.

You should have seen the day I met my wife, Carol. We were playing in Greensboro. I’m in my crouch at the plate, my bat way back. The first time I ever used this stance, I hit a three-run homer to win a game, so I’m sticking with it. Anyway, that day in Greensboro, I’m up in my crouch, and the catcher--trying to be cute--tips my bat ever so slightly, disrupting my swing.

The umpire doesn’t see it, but I tell the ump, “If that happens again, all hell’s gonna break loose!”

The catcher did it again.

I don’t say anything. I get back in the batter’s box. But instead of striding toward the plate on the next pitch, I swing and hit the catcher right across the mask.

The ball gets away, of course, and one of our runners scores on the passed ball. Me and the catcher are on the ground fighting, and I’m kicking his rear. We both get thrown out.

Anyway, I’m sitting in the stands and I see a pretty gal. I try making small talk, but she thinks I’m a rowdy. She wants no part of me. Later, I saw her around town, and we started dating.

Now she’s Carol McKeon.

I was a tough guy, no question. Just like my dad. One day, I was behind the plate, and some guy tapped one right in front of me. I’m out there quick to get it, but I get hit across the forehead with his bat as he’s following through on his swing.

I’m knocked out. They get me in an ambulance and sew me up, and I’ve got to stay in the hospital overnight. I mean, my head hurt a little, but there was no need to stay. I waited till the nurses weren’t around, I got my clothes and I took off. I met the team bus for the next leg of our trip.

I was supposed to miss a couple games, actually about five or six. I’ve got this bandage wrapped around my head, but I can’t sit around.

So I pitch batting practice for the team before a doubleheader one day. The other catcher is taking his swings, and I accidentally hit him in the knee (I swear, it was an accident). He can’t play. I talk my skipper into letting me take his place.

What happens? I immediately take four foul balls off my mask. The stitches pop, and there’s blood everywhere. The ump says, “Get out of here. Quit playing.” But I won’t go. I slap a Band-Aid up there, and that’s that.

So I make it through the first game of the doubleheader, and my manager doesn’t want me to catch the second game. But I’m tough, and I stay in there. In the second inning, I’m catching, and Ken Aspromonte--who later played in the majors--is up. He doesn’t like a strike call, and he starts jawing at the ump. He drops his bat, which hits me right in the darn head.

More blood.

I say, “Just give me a towel. I’m all right.”

Anyway, I got as high as Class B ball in the minors, but I got smart. There were good catchers everywhere--Roy Campanella, Yogi Berra, Joe Garagiola. So where was I going? Nowhere. I evaluated myself and realized I had a good arm and played decent defense, but I couldn’t run or hit. I said, “Jack, listen. If you can’t play in the big leagues, you can manage in the big leagues.”

I scouted myself pretty good.

THE MINOR LEAGUE MANAGER

In 1953, I was a minor leaguer in New Orleans, and Danny Murtaugh--the late Pittsburgh manager--was in charge. I watched his every move. He must have seen me out of the corner of his eye, because he asked me if I wanted to manage.

Uh-huh, I said.

Branch Rickey, the Pirate president, knew it, too. Eventually, he asked me in midseason to manage his club in Hutchinson, Kan. I was about to marry Carol, but I said I’d go. I get to Hutchinson, I pick up a newspaper and see a headline that says “Larry Dorton named manager.

Hey, I was supposed to be manager.

There had been a mix-up. Rickey didn’t tell some people in the organization that he’d hired me, and they hired someone else. Rickey promised I’d get the job next year.

Next year, the team folded.

So I eventually manage in Fayetteville, N.C., an independent club. I’m a player-manager. But I get hurt and can’t play. They say if I can’t play, I can’t manage. So they fire me.

So I go back to college. I’m at Elon College in North Carolina. I’m taking a test one day when someone passes me a message. It’s my wife. Some guy named Nick Mariana is looking for a manager.

“To hell with the test,” I say.

So I leave. I’m in my mid-20s now, and I go to Missoula, Mont., to be player/manager for the Missoula Timberjacks. We played against Bob Uecker. You know, he wasn’t bad.

This was Missoula’s first baseball team. We were celebrities in town. The people there gave us gifts all the time. I mean, we had a deal where the first guy to get a hit every night got a case of soda pop. The first pitcher to strike a guy out got a free banana split. Soon, I got this restaurant to give a ham and egg breakfast to the guys involved in the first double play of the night.

Every time a runner got on first, our infielders are chanting: “Ham and eggs! Ham and eggs!”

One of my all-time favorite guys was on that team. Chuck Weatherspoon was his name, but we just called him “Spoonie.” He was a big 6-foot 4-inch guy, and he was a lovable hunk. Not only did he play for me in Missoula, but in a bunch of places. We all got on him pretty good, though. You name it, we did it.

Spoonie was a gem. He always used to lie about his age. One year, he’d say he was 30. The next year, he’d be 29. So I fixed him. We were playing this exhibition against an Atlanta prison team, and we were walking near the cells on the way to the field. I went up to one of the prisoners and asked a favor. I told him where Spoonie was from and all that, and I asked him if he’d pose as a guy who went to school with Spoonie.

So Spoonie walks by, and this guy says “Hey, Spoonie!”

I say, “You know this guy?”

The inmate goes on to say that Spoonie is about 36 years old. Spoonie says, “Skip, I don’t even know the guy.”

Eventually, I worked my way up to Triple-A in the Kansas City Royals organization. In 1969, the Royals’ first year in existence, we had a pitcher named Bill Faul. He’d been with Detroit before the expansion draft, and he was on the downside of his career.

He was always talking big, always saying he’d shot this guy and that guy. And he said he used to bite off dogs’ and cats’ heads when he was younger. He said he used to eat live frogs.

Anyway, one night in Des Moines there’d been a big rainstorm, and somebody found a frog. They brought it out to Faul in the bullpen and told him he had to eat it or he’d been lying. So he asked them to wash the frog off and give him a cup of water. He did it. He ate the frog and spit out the bones.

So now, we go to our next stop, Indianapolis, and Faul has told the guys he’ll eat a parakeet. They find a pet store, and Faul picks out a blue parakeet. The lady behind the counter asks: “Would you like some bird food, too?”

Faul says: “He’s not gonna live that long.”

That night, we won, and all the guys sprinted for the clubhouse to watch Faul’s show. He had the bird in one hand, and Jimmy Campanis--Al Campanis’ kid--is doing the play-by-play.

“He’s looking at the parakeet . . . He’s studying it . . . “

Suddenly, the parakeet pecked Faul on the wrist. Faul screams: “That’s it!” And he bit the bird’s head off, feathers flying everywhere.

I was ready for the big leagues, I think.

THE BIG LEAGUE MANAGER

The Royals hired me for the 1973 season. The media probably got me fired a couple of years later.

Bob Lemon, the previous manager, was a favorite of the press. When he was let go by owner Ewing Kauffman, the writers took it out on me. I wasn’t popular in Kansas City.

I stressed baserunning and fundamentals. One of my players, Lou Piniella, used to moan and groan all the time about it. He was one the most selfish players I’d ever seen. He only wanted to hit, hit, hit. Our team went from fifth place to second place, but Piniella said I spent too much time on baserunning and not enough on hitting, and that’s why he had a bad year.

Unbelievable.

Anyway, I got fired in ‘75--we were 50-46 and in second place--but they told me they needed to make a change because of all the negative reaction in town. One writer later admitted to me that he did some unprofessional things to get me fired. That’s all right. It all worked out for the best.

I went to Oakland to work for Charlie Finley. Finley fired me twice, which was nice. After he fired me the second time, I said, “Charlie, why don’t you hire me for a day and then fire me again, so I can become the only guy you’ve ever fired three times?”

He said: “That’s an idea, Jack.” But he never did it.

Charlie was great. He’d call you every day. He might even call you 12 times a day. When he hired me, he told me, “I’m not only the owner, but I’m the general manager. Don’t forget it.” So one night, we’re playing the Royals, and we’re down, 2-1, in the seventh, but we’ve got the bases loaded and no outs.

Whitey Herzog--the Royal manager--brings in reliever Al Hrabosky, who’s always wild. I figure we’re gonna get a bunch of runs.

The phone rings. It’s Charlie.

“Consider the squeeze,” he says. And he hangs up.

Well, I consider it--for a second--but I don’t do it. Hrabosky goes 3 and 2 to my first batter, but strikes him out. Hrabosky goes 2 and 0 to my next batter, but strikes him out. My third batter pops up to second on the first pitch.

Well, before the second baseman can make the catch, the phone’s already ringing.

It’s Charlie.

“Damn it, I told you to squeeze!”

Click.

When Charlie fired me the second time, I was burned out from managing. Still, I had to work. I was running the Montreal Triple-A team in Denver in 1979 when I got a call from the Expo president, John McHale. He said the Padres wanted to talk to me. I told McHale I didn’t want to manage another bad team, but he told me this might not be a managing job.

TRADER JACK

The Padres wanted me to be an assistant general manager to Bob Fontaine. I’d always been good at evaluating talent--starting with myself--so I went ahead with it.

About eight months later, they fired Fontaine, and they were considering Gene Mauch and some other big names for the general manager job. In the meantime, the late owner Ray Kroc and Ballard Smith--the team president--let me run things.

Ray and Ballard liked what they saw, and I became GM.

Eventually, I became Trader Jack.

By the way, people think I make trades just for the sake of making trades, but that’s not true. When I came to San Diego, the team needed a complete overhaul. But after we won the pennant in 1984 and fell down in 1985, I wasn’t about to panic. I make trades that help the team, not just to make trades.

But then, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like trades. If another GM asks me if I want a certain guy, I rarely say no. Maybe I don’t have a need for a guy, but maybe I can acquire the guy anyway, and trade him for someone I do need.

Like the trade I almost made for shortstop Bucky Dent. I got a call from Milwaukee in 1983, I think. The Brewers ask me, “Will you trade Joe Lefebvre?” And I say, yes. Then, they ask me if I have interest in Bucky Dent, who’s with the Yankees at the time. I say no, but then the Brewers say they can get Dent from the Yankees. I say, “Let me get back to you.”

So I call a bunch of clubs that need shortstops. I call the Mets, who need one badly. They like Dent, but the Yankees won’t give him to them.

The Mets ask what would I want in return for Dent, and I like this young untested pitcher named Jesse Orosco. And another kid pitcher named Mike Scott. The Mets say they’ll think about it.

Eventually, the Brewers call back and say, “Well, are you gonna do it?” I say, “Gimme an hour.”

I call the Mets back, and they’re still hemming and hawing. The Mets didn’t want to do it. But that’s why I never say no to a team.

I almost got Frank White from Kansas City in 1983. I needed a second baseman, and I was trying to work a multiteam trade. The Royals wanted Bill Buckner from the Cubs, and I could get Buckner for Dennis Rasmussen. So the Royals were willing to give me White and pitcher Frank Wills for Buckner and second baseman Juan Bonilla.

In the meantime, I was also trying to get a kid named Carmelo Martinez from the Cubs and a kid named Joe Carter from the Indians. This was gonna be a five-team trade for me. The Royals, though, changed their minds. John Schuerholz, their general manager said, “We can’t trade White. They’ll run us out of town.”

Speaking of towns, Ray Kroc was great for San Diego. People may not know it, but he was a feisty one. I’d be watching a game in his private box, and some kid would make an error, and he’d scream: “Send him to Hawaii, Jack!” He’d get on Dave Winfield, too. A fly ball would get over Winfield’s head, and Ray would start at it. “Trade him! Hustle, Winfield! Jump!”

He wanted me to trade Randy Jones, but he figured there was no way anybody would take him. I told Ray that the Mets might be interested in Jones, and Ray said: “You’re kidding. You do that, and I’ll give you a McDonald’s franchise.”

People keep asking me about the new guy, George Argyros, who just bought the team. What can I say? As of now, nothing has changed. No one has told me different. I can make the trades I want to. The new guy has no control of the ballclub yet, so I’m moving ahead like before.

Getting back to the team, the Padres hired Dick Williams in 1982, and I thought it was a good hire at the time. Dick had won before, and we needed a guy who could be rough with the players. The problem with Dick was that he held a grudge. You can’t do that.

Now, really, I had no trouble with Dick. I’ve seen where he’s been ripping me in the press, calling me a liar and so forth. I thought Dick and I worked together well. What happened here was a business decision. And, no, I’m not gonna rip him back.

Still, a lot of things Dick is saying aren’t true. He says I wanted to manage and that I was forcing him out. I’m sorry he feels that way. Yes, I could’ve managed that team and helped get them straightened out, but I had no desire to manage the Padres. Ballard asked me about it, but I don’t think Joan Kroc wanted me to manage.

Dick says when I fired Ozzie Virgil--his third base coach--that I was trying to force him out. That’s false. I tried doing Ozzie a favor. Dick told Ballard and me he was quitting, so I called Ozzie and said I was letting him go for reasons I couldn’t explain yet, and this would give him a chance to start looking for a job. Next thing you know, Dick says I’m firing Ozzie to get to him.

But he told me he was quitting, right? Later, when we had a big meeting at Joan’s house, I asked Dick, “Why would I have to consult you of changes we’ve made when you’ve said you were quitting?” He agreed. But then he comes out and says I forced him out. Amazing.

I’d rather talk about trades than Dick Williams. Right before 1984, we got Carmelo Martinez and Craig Lefferts. Guess how? I’m talking about trading Gary Lucas to Montreal, but the Expos want to give me Scott Sanderson. I don’t particularly want Sanderson. Then, the Cubs’ Dallas Green starts chatting with me, and he says he needs a pitcher. I say, “Got anybody in mind?” And he mentions Sanderson.

I gasp. I say, “I can get Sanderson.” He asks me what I want in return, and it takes me about five seconds to say, “Martinez and Lefferts.”

People say that LaMarr Hoyt deal backfired, but I say no. We were at the 1984 winter meetings, and I’m talking to the White Sox about our young shortstop, Ozzie Guillen. I want one of their pitchers, Richard Dotson. They won’t trade Dotson, and then they ask me if I want Floyd Bannister. I’m figuring there’s no way we’ll work things out, but then Roland Hemond, their GM, says, “You got any interest in LaMarr Hoyt?”

Inside, I’m thinking: “You’re darn right.”

On the outside, I say, “Let me think about it.”

I had no idea they’d give us Hoyt. They wanted a lot--Guillen, Luis Salazar and Tim Lollar. I thought it was too much. Eventually, we got it done. They threw in two kids, and one of them--pitcher Todd Simmons--was in training camp with us this year.

I still say it was a good deal for both sides. Guillen was rookie of the year, but we got what we wanted, a premium pitcher. If you want a premium player, you’ve got to give up a premium player. Sure, it hurts that Hoyt was just let go. Now, you wonder how long it will take to replace him? Hopefully, Storm Davis can pick up the slack, but wouldn’t be nice to have both Davis and Hoyt?

In two years, we’ve had to give away players for nothing--Alan Wiggins and Hoyt--because of drugs. They had value, but we just gave them away. Maybe you could’ve traded them for someone of equal value or close to equal value. We couldn’t, so now we’ve got to hope young kids like Jimmy Jones come along.

That’s our direction now: Young kids. That’s why the McReynolds deal was intriguing, because we got the Kevin Mitchells, the Stan Jeffersons, the Shawn Abners. I shot for the works. I tried getting pitchers such as Rick Aguilera and Randy Meyers, and the Mets wouldn’t budge. But I ended up with a guy like Abner, a phenom outfielder. In a way, I took a chance with that deal. Hell, you take a chance in any deal. But one thing about me, I’m not afraid to gamble. I’m not afraid to make a trade.

As long as I’ve got my cigar.