McKeon Playing Hand He Dealt Himself

“Trader Jack,” said the T-shirt.

The mustachioed caricature on the front had a cigar clenched in his teeth . . . and five aces in his hand. Another was tucked into his visor.

Trader Jack could hardly lose with that hand.

The real Trader Jack was inside the T-shirt, stretching it just a bit with his ample girth. Like the caricature, he, too, was smoking a cigar. In fact, he had six more, in what to most people would have been a pencil holder, on his desk.

“You’re welcome to smoke in here,” McKeon said. “If you haven’t got cigars, I’ll supply ‘em.”

McKeon was sitting in the catacombs at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium. He is now the Padres’ manager, as well as general manager. This was his first day in his basement office.

McKeon’s problem, it would seem, is not his supply of cigars but rather his supply of aces. The game is baseball, and his predecessor, Larry Bowa, was fired a week ago because he could not win with what he was dealt. And Jack McKeon is playing with the same hand.

Indeed, McKeon is managing the hand he and club president Chub Feeney dealt to Bowa.

“Hey,” he said, “I get upset when I read that this club has no talent. There is talent on this ballclub. It’s my job to get it out of ‘em now. I brought most of these guys over, and I’m close to ‘em, and I think they’ll respond to me.”

Forget that most of the Padre hitters have batting averages that would not be lower if they were hitting with McKeon’s cigars. Forget that this club finished last a year ago and came home Friday for a basement battle with the Atlanta Braves. Forget that Houdini might be incapable of escaping this predicament.

There would be nothing negative from Trader Jack. Everything would be aces and roses . . . and maybe Cuban cigars.

When they came home Friday, the Padres were 2-3 under McKeon after two games in New York and three in Philadelphia. It was nothing dramatic, one way or the other.

But McKeon was happy.

“I’ve enjoyed it,” he said. “It’s only five games, but I’ve enjoyed ‘em. It has made me feel young again. I’m very, very proud of the fact that the guys have busted their tails.”

Being a manager would make McKeon, 57, young again. That was how he spent his youth. Managing. The Padres have just one player on the roster--Keith Moreland--who was born when McKeon managed his first game in 1955 at the age of 24. He managed in 13 different cities over the next 24 years, many of them remote outposts such as Fayetteville, Missoula, Fox Cities, Wilson and High Point-Thomasville.

You have a kid who is having problems with his geography? Have him give Jack McKeon a call. You know that Tangletowns game The Times had a few years ago? McKeon has lived in most of those places.

“A few years ago,” he said, “a guy figured out that I was the guy who had managed in the most cities. Stan Wasiak might have passed me up by now, but don’t forget that I stayed out for 10 years.”

McKeon has been the Padres’ general manager since 1980, taking over on an interim basis in July and full time in September. More than 120 transactions since then have gotten him his nickname and a measure of comfort and security in his suit and upstairs office.

And now he was back in uniform.

His wife and family were among those who questioned his return to the dugout.

“They were concerned about the pressures of the job,” he said. “I talked to the whole family. The boys, naturally, were for it, and I guess the girls didn’t really know what to think. I figured I never got ulcers in all those years before, so why should I get ‘em now?”

Really. If he didn’t get ulcers managing for Charlie Finley, he shouldn’t get them managing for Joan Kroc. Finley hired him after he let players such as Catfish Hunter, Joe Rudi, Reggie Jackson, Gene Tenace and Rollie Fingers get away . . . and then fired him the next year when he couldn’t win with the dregs that remained.

His other big league job was with Kansas City, where he had some excellent players . . . but had them just ahead of their time.

“We started with a veteran club,” he said, “but I started infiltrating it with youth. I was figuring we would be in position to win it in ‘76, and we did. Except I was fired in ’75.”

McKeon, the manager, has another club being infiltrated with youth. It is his club and his youth. This club will not win this year, and likely not next. But McKeon is not concerned with next year.

“I’m not even thinking about it,” he said. “I’m just thinking about the balance of this year.”

The year will be spent working on his players’ confidence, building them up to where they believe they are as good as he believes they are. He will be patient with his hitters and pitchers.

“I’ll probably let the pitchers go for an extra hitter or two and not pinch-hit in situations where 96% of the people in the park think I ought to,” he said. “I’m gonna let these guys go and let ‘em know I have faith in ‘em.”

The telephone rang. No, it was not Charlie Finley. It was Joan Kroc.

Was she suggesting a lineup?

McKeon laughed.

“She just called to wish us good luck,” he said. “That’s kinda nice. She did it when we were in Philadelphia, and it worked. That was the 8-0 game.”

With that kind of luck, maybe he will end up holding six aces. He looked like he already did. Except his cigar had gone out.