Extra Innings

Marlins bench coach Harry Dunlop, who has worked for four big-league teams with McKeon and who was also ousted from the Reds in 2000, considers himself one of McKeon's closest friends. The lanky septuagenarian has spent so much time with McKeon that Miami Herald columnist Greg Cote recently compared them to "an old married couple." The two attend Mass every day together on the road; it was McKeon, in fact, who first introduced Dunlop to Catholicism decades ago, when Dunlop needed a ride to the stadium, and McKeon stopped at a church along the way. To Dunlop, the idea of McKeon fired by the Reds at age 70 is grim indeed.

McKeon describes his forced retirement thusly: "Now I'm out of baseball in 2000," he says. "I get fired with the Reds. I was enjoying doing nothing, seeing my grandkids, working with them. And I'd go to church every morning. I'd pray. Course, Saint Theresa's one of my favorite saints, the Little Flower, and she's the prodigy of miracles in the Catholic Church. I kept praying to her, 'Can you intercede with the good Lord and see if there's any way.... I don't know what his plans are with me, but I'd like to have one more chance. I don't think my career's been fulfilled. I'd like to have one more chance.'"

In other words, McKeon in 2000 was a great deal like McKeon in 1948.

In a buoyant postgame, reporters mobbed the manager's office April 13. With his papal blessing from John Paul II on the wall and the stench of victory cigar blocking the usual bacteria-stink of the locker room, McKeon holds court: "You know why Wrigley made his fortune?"

Someone mumbles: "I think you gave us this one already."

McKeon, undeterred: "By sticking to his gums. Ha ha haaa heh heh!"

Then there's the time, some weeks ago, when a radio guy flubbed a question: "Was that a missed sign, with [third baseman Mike] Lowell? On the stolen base? Did he miss the sign?"

"Who?" McKeon asked.

"Was it Lowell who got thrown out at second, or was it [catcher Paul] Lo Duca? Sorry, Lo Duca."

McKeon's voice takes on a harsh edge. "Guy gets thrown out, he misses a sign?"

"Well, he's pretty slow, no?"

"Beg your pardon?" the manager replies, only it comes out more like begrpardn?

"I said, Lo Duca's a pretty slow guy, he misses ..."

"Well, he got a stolen base last night, if you were watching the game," McKeon bites back. "This time we tried a delayed steal. Didn't work. I should send up signs to you guys in the press box, when we miss a sign. 'Hey, he missed a sign! Whoa!' Guys get thrown out. They don't miss signs. C'mon."

Then, to the whole room: "What else?"

All considered, his retirement from 2000 to 2003 wasn't such bad times. He was back at home in North Carolina, and in a way, he was getting to be the grandfather he never could be as a father. The man who missed three of his four kids' high school graduations was there to tutor Kristi's son, Zach, who's now a pitcher at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington.

McKeon threw batting practice at the local high school. He fed the fish in his pond so regularly that they knew dinner was between 5:30 and 6:00 p.m -- to the chagrin of anyone who wanted to actually catch fish there. His kids noticed him watering the fake houseplants, but said nothing, knowing he was only trying to help. He would mow the lawn often, even when the grass was too brown to care, even injuring himself at one point when his pants caught the gearshift on his lawn tractor and it dragged him along the ground until the mower hit the side of the house. "That was something," says McKeon's 37-year-old son Kasey, who scouts for the Rockies, "that led us to believe he needed to get back into baseball."

Luckily for McKeon, the Marlins were tanking. Bill Beck, a friend of McKeon's from the Padres and Royals, suggested new owner Jeffrey Loria take a look at the retired manager. In his recent book I'm Just Getting Started, McKeon writes that he visited Loria to talk shop but clearly didn't think he was interviewing for a job, because he addressed Loria as "Jerry" after the meeting.

The rest of the season became sports lore in South Florida, where only two previous men, the Marlins' Jim Leyland and the Dolphins' Don Shula, have ever won a pro sports title.