He Can Trade Players but Not Image

On Page 168 of his book, “Jack of All Trades,” Jack McKeon says: “I promise you, I will never manage the San Diego Padres.”

There are those who think he has kept his word, that what he has done since stepping down--or sideways--from the general manager’s job can hardly be construed as managing.

Or, it’s possible that the San Diego Padres cannot be managed. They are, like San Diego itself, kind of bland, mild, not terribly interesting, a team with an annual average temperature of 70, light winds out of the southwest and tomorrow more of the same. Pure vanilla. White bread. Naturally decaffeinated. Unleaded regular. Sea World East.

They keep getting cranky managers to see if they can light a fire under this bunch, but it always fizzles out. This is a team that traded away Ozzie Smith, who is only the greatest shortstop who ever turned a double play; Kevin McReynolds, Dave Winfield, Kevin Mitchell.

They once had a 20-game winner whose fastball looked like a changeup. You got two swings at it. They’re not a team, they’re a drag.

They drove tough-guy managers Dick Williams and Larry Bowa up the wall.

It is a team that needed a couple of characters. So they got Jack McKeon to come out from behind a desk and onto the field to see if he could get these guys to, at least, frost a mirror.

Baseball lately has been getting like the rest of American business--computerized, depersonalized, a kind of commodity market in spikes. They get managers up through the ranks--organization men. B-o-r-r-r-i-n-g.

Many years ago, when the New York Yankees hired Casey Stengel, a man who had never won anything but laughs, who was widely regarded as a buffoon, not a baseball man, the reaction was, “Well, there goes the dynasty!”

Well, Casey won 10 pennants in 12 years, rewrote English syntax and, above all, made it fun.

A lot of us thought Jack McKeon might do somewhat the same for the San Diego Padres. The Padres, to be sure, are not to be confused with the Stengel Yankees--or any other kind of Yankees, for that matter--but they figured McKeon might liven them up. The Padres had tried the Obersturmbannfuhrer approach and it didn’t work, maybe the light approach could do it.

Jack is not one of those guys who goes around letting birds out of his cap. But he does have a sense of humor and that right there would be a switch for San Diego.

Jack is a guy who once pulled a gun out of his pocket and fired blanks at one of his players who ran through his stop sign in the third base coaching box. The fellow was out anyway when he covered his head and hit the deck halfway to the plate, but Jack thinks his lesson got home even if his runner didn’t.

Another time, Jack bought a clothesline to tether one of his adventurous runners.

“It’s all in my book,” reminded Jack the other night as he stood on the steps of the dugout in Dodger Stadium and watched his pitcher warming up. “You could do those things in the minor leagues. You could have fun.”

Jack once wired up his pitcher to a two-way hookup and radioed him when a guy would take too big a lead at first.

“Unfortunately, I forgot to tell my first baseman, and the first throw over there hit him right in the head,” McKeon said.

The minor leagues, contends Jack, had a higher concentration of flakes than Kellogg’s. For instance, you ever hear of a pitcher protesting a called third strike? McKeon did.

His pitching staff had been burned so often on 0-2 pitches that he announced he would fine any pitcher throwing an 0-2 strike. His pitcher, on an 0-2 count, threw a pitch so high and away the catcher had to leap for it.

“Strike Three!” yelled the ump.

Off the mound came the irate pitcher, screaming, “That ball was high! That’s no strike!”

As a wheeler-dealer, Jack had a reputation of a guy who would trade Ruth and Gehrig just to shake things up. Since he didn’t have them, he did the next best thing: Smith and Kevin Mitchell.

Actually, Jack traded players by the carload--an 11-player deal once, an eight-player swap another time, two seven-player transactions, two involving six and two involving five. Unaccountably, it worked. Jack actually put together the team that won the 1984 National League pennant.

It’s not likely that Jack McKeon can turn the Padres into the Gashouse Gang, but they do need a little lightening up. They need a little fizz. They have the talent to win. Provided Jack doesn’t trade it away. All he has to do is make the Padres exciting.

If he can do that, think what a cinch Calvin Coolidge would have been for him.