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Orthopaedic Surgeon Started Career on the Diamond

Physicians typically follow a winding path to their final practice or hospital destination. Undergrad, medical school, internships and residency often take aspiring doctors on a tour of schools and medical facilities that cover hundreds if not thousands of miles before finally settling down.

For Dr. Jason McConnell, however, the medical education portion of his professional journey was short and sweet — undergrad at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, medical school and residency in Little Rock and his first real gig in Benton before moving to Mountain Home nearly 10 years ago.
 

It was his first career in baseball that put the miles on him. A talented shortstop, McConnell played for the Arkansas Razorbacks before being drafted into the Minnesota Twins organization where he played in the club’s farm system. And it was there, with the long bus rides, unfavorable climate and less-than-desirable ballpark accommodations, that he learned what grinding really meant. “I played in Fort Wayne, Indiana, my first year, and then the next year the Twins team was in Quad City, Iowa,” he said. “I started there and was there for like, a month, just long enough for it to be super, super cold in March. It was pretty brutal. “There would be some games where we’d be in the visiting locker room, and our coach would be out there and they would yell down when it was your turn to run out there and hit. You’d take like five swings and run around the bases as fast as you could and come back in. It was pretty miserable the first couple weeks.”
 

No athlete can predict where his or her career will lead, but if ever there was a candidate for pro ball, it was McConnell. Growing up in Magnolia, he started in the game from the time he was old enough to throw. By his early teens his father, Cecil, had built him a batting cage in the backyard to feed his growing love of America’s pastime, doubling as McConnell’s first coach. “I started switch-hitting when I was 12 which took a lot of work. I can remember in All-Stars we were playing this practice game against a team, and they weren’t very good and my dad made me turn around and hit left-handed. All my buddies were strokin’ it, and I’m up there striking out.

“It took a bit of time to get the hang of it, but once I did, I actually think I was a better hitter left-handed when it was all said and done. I had a little more power and probably better mechanics.” College would beckon during high school and while Arkansas had a great baseball tradition, thanks to longtime coach Norm DeBriyn, McConnell’s future as a Hog wasn’t a slam-dunk. “All my family is from Louisiana; I was one of those kids that rooted for LSU until I got to high school. We watched the Razorbacks, but we were not a big, diehard Razorback family growing up,” he said.
 

“I looked at Arkansas State. I got some letters from LSU, but I didn’t ever go on a visit down there. I looked at a couple of junior colleges, but I didn’t really want to do that. I actually had my mind made up I was going to Oklahoma but Laney, my wife now, was going to Arkansas and so at some point, I don’t entirely remember what changed, but something changed my mind.” McConnell started three years for the Hogs during which time Baum Stadium was christened. He holds the distinction of getting the first hit in the new ballpark and also graduated holding the record for the number of triples hit during a game and for the most hits during a single game.
 

An impressive summer in the Cape Cod League after junior year led the Twins to draft the shortstop, and he left school to hit the road. The minors had their moments — he still grins over being put in to pitch an inning once, where he struck out a batter with a knuckleball no one knew he had. Three years later, however, he’d hit a crossroads and turned to his former coach, Cecil McConnell, for advice. “Deciding to leave got really easy for me one day,” he said. “I talked to my dad, and I said, ‘You know, if I made it to the big leagues tomorrow, it’s 162 games, half of them on the road. Spring training’s six weeks, eight weeks, and when you’re at home you go to work at noon, and you get home at midnight. That’s not the life that I want to have.’ “Once I realized that, it became really easy for me to walk away from it. I mean, at first it wasn’t. You’ve planned and worked your whole life toward this, you have buddies doing it and moving up. But once I came to that realization it was kind of a no-brainer. A lot of guys playing ball just want to play ball, you know? I had other things I wanted to do.”
 

From the diamond, McConnell returned to the University of Arkansas to complete a degree in microbiology, followed by medical school and residency at UAMS. He immediately found some of the things that helped him on the diamond were equally useful in medicine. “Getting through med school and residency was pretty intense, and my career as an athlete really helped there,” he said. “I was always a worker; I had always been pretty motivated and focused. That helped a lot there.”
 

Today, McConnell serves patients of all descriptions, including a fair number of sports injuries, and at age 47, he still connects to such cases athlete-to-athlete. In his spare time, he follows baseball only sparingly, preferring instead to spend time with his wife Laney and the couple’s two daughters Merritt, a junior in high school, and Mary Charles, an eighth grader. And before you ask... “Charley plays tennis and Merritt runs track and does dance,” he said. “No, they don’t play softball. I get asked that all the time.”