The skip The Texas Rangers are in Surprise, Ariz. getting ready for the 2011 season. I'm here in my mom's basement blogging. This is an installment of posts about those Texas Rangers and what they'll need to do to win. Keys: Tinkering, Neftali Feliz, Mark Lowe and Getting Better.
Have you read the D Magazine feature on the Texas Rangers' skipper, Ron Washington? It's really an un-feature. Washington is featured prominently. All despite not speaking more than a sentence to the reporter.
Michael Mooney simply crashed Washington's lowly New Orleans home seeking an interview. Problem is, Wash doesn't give interviews in New Orleans.
The feature is fascinating. In one fell swoop, it pulls the curtain back on a guy that couldn't be more happy go lucky and, yet, we couldn't know less about the guy. I learned no less than four dozen things about Washington from Mooney's story.
I think I also learned why he's been successful as a coach or manager in professional baseball. It's no coincidence that the manager that the 25 guys on the Rangers' roster play their guts out for is the same man that Eric Chavez gave his Golden Glove award to and the same man that Jason Giambi wrote a $25,000 to after he lost his house after hurricane Katrina.
It's no coincidence that during the Michael Young drama over the winter, Washington was always the guy Young went to. It's no mistake that his players stood behind him -- when everyone else bailed -- after the cocaine issue of a year ago.
What does this feature tell us about winning baseball games? Almost very little. There some insight about Wash and his ability to coach players up. Other managers are admired and respected. Others know how to "coach." Not all of them win. Not all of them take a ragtag group to the World Series.
Washington's past and present -- the $110 house in New Orlean's Ninth Ward, his brother dying in Vietnam, his trials of growing up poor and in a bad neighborhood, his baseball career, the "NIGGER" etched into his front drive -- has either EVERYTHING or NOTHING to do with his ability to manage a baseball club.
I personally feel it has EVERYTHING to do with his ability to manage a baseball club.
There's not a more genuine guy in Dallas-Fort Worth sports history. What we learned in a magazine story four years after his hire, those guys in the clubhouse have probably known within the first 30 days.
That he's worth playing for. Worth believing in. Worth leaving it all on the field for.
Those trials and tribulations define Washington. It's why he's still living in a crappy house in a crappy neighborhood of a crappy city.
By association, Washington defines the Texas Rangers. Not always having the best, but making due with what you got.
We do not deserve Ron Washington.
