NEWS
10/26/11 2:13pm
The 'lifer,' McKeon reflects on 62 years in professional baseball
Jack McKeon, 81, leans back and takes a puff of his ever-present Padron cigar. He stares off into a cloud of smoke, seemingly searching through an endless hoard of baseball stories — maybe the memory of winning the World Series in 2003 or perhaps the slog of rookie ball in the Midwest. Chuckling to himself, he returns from his reverie. "Could you, the Blessed Virgin Mary, intercede with the Lord and convince my father to let me sign a professional contract?" McKeon recalls praying. It was 1948, McKeon's freshman year at The College of the Holy Cross.