Jack McKeon is older than Frank Robinson and Hank Aaron. He’s older than Willie Mays, older than Ernie Banks. He’s older than Jim Bunning. He’s older than Whitey Herzog.
He’s even older than Matt Stairs.
He’s older than night baseball, older than televised baseball, older than the ground-rule double, older than the All-Star Game.
He’s older than Bobby Cox — by 10 years. He’s older than Davey Johnson — by 12.
We could do this all day. How about deceased people, you say? McKeon is older than Sparky Anderson, older than Mickey Mantle, older than Ted Kennedy, older than Barack Obama Sr.
We point all this out not with derision, but with awe. Jack McKeon is 80 years old, and he is the manager of the Florida Marlins, a job for which his four immediate predecessors, in reverse chronological order, were 37, 49, 43 and 41, respectively, at the time they started. Only one player on McKeon’s 25-man roster, 38-year-old outfielder Mike Cameron, had been born when McKeon first managed in the big leagues, with Kansas City in 1973. None was with the Marlins when McKeon last managed there, in 2005 — having led the franchise to a World Series title two years earlier.
The oldest manager in baseball, and the oldest since Connie Mack hung it up at age 87 in 1950, McKeon endures rain-delayed games that end at 1 a.m. and cross-country flights that end at 6 a.m. He endures 27-year-old multimillionaire shortstops who don’t always run out groundballs and don’t always show up on time — though “endure” may be the wrong word. On June 20, McKeon’s first day on the job after the Marlins named him interim manager to replace the departed Edwin Rodriguez, he unceremoniously benched star shortstop Hanley Ramirez for tardiness.
What was the reason for Ramirez’s absence from the lineup, McKeon was asked that night?
“Because I didn’t put him in there,” McKeon shot back.
On Tuesday morning, McKeon sat at a small table off the lobby of the Marlins’ team hotel in Washington. Nobody seemed to recognize him. Due to flight delays, the Marlins didn’t arrive at the hotel until nearly 1 a.m., but McKeon still asked for a 7 a.m. wake-up call and was seated at a Catholic church around the corner — he attends Mass daily, without fail — by 8:30.
He was at church, in fact, the June morning that the call came from the Marlins. His wife, Carol, gave him the message — Rodriguez has resigned, call us — when he got home.
“Oh,” McKeon told her, “they probably want me to take over.”
“Aw, come on,” Carol said. “You’re crazy.”
He called the Marlins back. They offered him the job. The next day, he called back and said yes.
“I said yes because I love it,” he said Tuesday. “I was out [of the game] for five years. The first couple of years I really enjoyed it. But after about two years, I was getting bored. I had the itch again. There's nothing that replaces that adrenaline rush, that fire in your belly that comes from the competition, the decision-making, the pressure. That’s what I missed.”
The McKeons have four children and nine grandchildren, and some of them voiced concern over his taking the job. But none tried to stop him — they knew it would be no use.
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