In his first season with the A's, he batted .310 and scored eighty runs for the double A West Haven A's to be voted the sixth best prospect in the Eastern League in a 1982 poll of the league's managers. After one more season in the minors, he received a September call up to Oakland in 1983. A's managerSteve Boros used McNealy mostly as a pinch runner in the fifteen games in which he appeared. McNealy logged just four plate appearances without getting a hit, but still managed to score five runs. On September 27, 1983, he scored the game winning run of their 5-4 victory over the Chicago White Sox pinch running for Jeff Burroughs.[2]