ARLINGTON, Tx. — The last time Ron Washington was here, it was nine years ago. Not here as in Arlington — Washington was the Rangers manager for nearly three seasons after the last time he took the Rangers to the World Series, and he has returned as a member of the Oakland Athletics coaching staff and once, last year, for Michael Young’s jersey number retirement ceremony. And not here as in Globe Life Field, since this is the stadium’s inaugural season. But here. On the cusp of the big prize. Here, one game away from the World Series. The last two times Washington has been here before this season, his teams were able to cross the threshold into the Fall Classic.
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That took place, in part, just across the street at Globe Life Park, the visage of which is still visible through its successor’s left-field windows. The last time Washington was here here, it was Josh Hamilton, Adrián Beltré, Nelson Cruz and Co. providing the nightly pyrotechnics and Washington at the helm, the effervescent, arm-pumping, running-in-place captain of the ship.
“We made it to the ultimate, which was the World Series,” Washington said back in April as a guest on the “Welcome to the Hit Show” podcast. “I had a group of guys that — I tell you what, anybody that had them would have loved ’em. Because they loved each other, they loved to play the game of baseball, and they wanted to be good for the fans in Texas. They wanted to be good for each other. They wanted to be good for (equipment manager) Hoggie (Price), they wanted to be good for Emily (Jones, sideline reporter)!”
The team delivered on that much, even if they were never able to clear the summit and bring home the trophy. Washington’s time in Texas coincided with the best years in franchise history. But the groundwork for those winning seasons was laid earlier, when Washington first arrived from the Athletics organization to take the reins before the 2007 season, following the departure of Buck Showalter.
“I got some advice when I left Oakland to come over to Texas, and I got it from a guy by the name of Eric Chavez,” Washington adds. “He told me ‘Wash, we’re going to miss you, but when you go over there to Texas, don’t change who you are.’ Well, it was hard for me to try to be something other than what I was.”
Being himself has never been an issue. There’s nobody quite like Wash. But when he arrived in Texas, he was a self-professed “novice” — a first-time manager who first had to win over a room before he could win any games. He did so by heeding Chavez’ advice.
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“I did things that made you touch your head,” Washington says. “But I didn’t do them because I didn’t know what the heck I was doing; I did it because at the time, I thought that’s what needed to be done. (When) the way I did it didn’t work … well, that’s where you get questions. I wasn’t worried about that. I was just looking down the road — the type of baseball that I wanted to present, and I wanted my players to understand how to play.”
One player he needed on his side was the undisputed clubhouse leader, Michael Young.
“One thing Wash does really well is … (he’s) a very colorful guy, but I wouldn’t get that confused with his lack of appreciation for fundamentals,” Young says now. “He wants to make sure that easy things remain easy. If you’ve got a layup, don’t miss it. Three pointers; three-pointers are going to go in and out sometimes, but let’s not miss our layups. And that’s one thing that I think our team became very good at over time. And that was I think Wash’s influence.”
In Washington’s second year at the helm, Young won his first and only Gold Glove award.
“I honestly think, looking back, (2008) was one of the most frustrating years of my career,” Young says now. “I was pretty much banged up all year, had a bad year offensively, broke two fingers, I just didn’t feel good. And I started having some Achilles issues. I remember Wash took me aside and he’s like ‘Hey, listen, I can’t sit you down … I know you’re hurting (but) if you just go out there and (with) every ball hit to shortstop, if the other team knows it’s an out, then you’ve had a really, really great year.’ And that was something he really impressed upon me that season. And that was pretty much I think what I did for that year. I was hobbled a little bit, but I said ‘I’m going to make sure that our pitchers — every time the ball’s hit in my general direction — that play is an out.'”
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Washington’s time as Rangers manager ended abruptly in 2014. The specific details are still not public, but in the three-minute September press conference, he acknowledged that marital infidelity was a factor.
“I made a mistake, and I am embarrassed,” Washington said at the time. “I was not true to my wife after 42 years. I broke her trust. I am here today to own that mistake … All I ask is for your forgiveness and understanding.” And then, for a few months, Washington was a ghost. He returned to New Orleans and worked to make sure his marriage made it to year 43.
Meanwhile, in Oakland, new acquisition Marcus Semien was struggling in his first full season as a big-league shortstop. Anyone familiar with Washington knows that infield instruction is his forte, and Billy Beane was familiar with Washington. In Washington’s first stint there, before he departed for the Rangers job, Chavez — he of the “never change” advice — famously signed one of his Gold Glove trophies with the inscription “Not without you, Wash” and presented it to the coach.
“I had made a number of errors those first two months, and I think Billy Beane called Wash, because he didn’t have a job at the time,” Semien says now. “So they brought him in, and we got right to work. He built a ton of confidence in me just from the routine that we did every day, I started to get a little better at it each and every day. Once it translated into the game, I felt like I was kind of turning a corner there.”
The A’s shortstop — who has been a Gold Glove finalist each of the last two years — cites drills that have by now become fairly well-known.
“I’ve seen those Braves guys doing it; that’s exactly what I was doing with the flat glove and the small glove,” Semien says. “Just the way that he can handle fungoes from a short distance, that was his main thing — focusing on the short distance, catching the last hop. That cleaned up a lot of things for me, catching the ball. And then we have a particular drill throwing the ball where we would just set up a ball at each spot, and just throw from all different kinds of angles. I needed that. I needed reps like that, to get my confidence up. And he knew exactly what to do.”
Those drills didn’t start when Washington got back to Oakland in 2015. They were the same ones he used during his first tenure there, the same ones he used in Texas. In fact, Washington was known to teach those drills to even those he knew would never set spike on the dirt of a big-league infield. In 2007, beat writers T.R. Sullivan and David Sessions were making small talk with the new Rangers manager in the visiting dugout at Kansas City.
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“There’s this flat ‘pancake’ glove sitting next to Wash and T.R. asks him what it’s for,” Sessions recalls. “Wash explains that it’s for teaching fielders the right way to use their hands to scoop up the ball. Then he orders me to put the glove on and stand at the other end of the dugout. He picks up a fungo bat and tells me to get into my fielding stance. I oblige, sort of halfheartedly, and he says I need to get lower, to bend my knees. ‘Get your ass down!'”
It was at this point that Washington started hitting ground balls to Sessions in the dugout, and not Little League rollers, either.
“Like, real, hard one-hoppers,” Sessions recalls. “I’m fighting them off, trying to scoop with both hands like he’s telling me, and this goes on for maybe a minute — long enough that I am out of breath by the time he tells me that’s enough. I mean, he was really whacking them at me. He looks at T.R., smiles and says, ‘If I can teach that (expletive) to field, I can teach anybody.'”
It was that instructional reputation that led the Braves to hire him away from Oakland. Teeming with infield stars and soon-to-be stars like Freddie Freeman, Ozzie Albies, Dansby Swanson and others, it made sense to bring in the infield guru to take them to the next level.
“I got that infield very, very, very young,” Washington said back in April. “Matter of fact, they were younger than Miguel (Tejada), Eric (Chavez) and Mark Ellis and those guys. They were very, very young. And they were so respectful.”
Like his arrival in Texas, those first days in Atlanta required some buy-in.
“I think back to two years ago in spring training, before I got called up; Wash was working with me and implementing the ‘Wash drills,'” says infielder Johan Camargo. “It was a little bit of an adjustment, a little uncomfortable, just because I’ve never had a routine set in place like that before. So it took some time to get used to. Before I really, truly bought in, I made some errors and some mistakes that sort of cost me. I was demoted back to the minor leagues.”
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“I’ve never, since I’ve been here, forced anyone to come do anything that they don’t want to do,” Washington says of his early days in Atlanta. “I think as a teacher, as a mentor, as a coach, you have to put the availability there and give them an opportunity to show up. … There will always be someone that’s interested. And once you get that one that’s interested, and (other players) begin to see the development of that one, everybody wants a piece of it. And that’s what I think keeps these guys going, because they see each and every one of them improving.”
Once Camargo bought in and acclimated to the drills, he says Washington turned him into a “monster.”
“It’s just crazy to see the difference now, just playing on the field after everything that I’ve taken from him. I’m eternally grateful for that he’s done for me and he’s made a huge impact on me personally.”
It’s not just the guys who came up under Washington’s tutelage who have benefited from his coaching. Like Young in Texas, Freddie Freeman was an established fixture with the team, having played in seven big-league seasons before Wash’s arrival. Like Young, he won his first Gold Glove award in Washington’s second year with the team.
“I have gold on my glove, and that’s because of Ron Washington,” said Freeman. “We do his drills every single day. He’s just a fiery presence. He makes each and every person better. He has so much fun and joy for this game, and it wears off on us.”
If infield instruction is what Washington is most known for in the coaching world, it’s that “fun and joy” that fans know him for.
“I think enthusiasm is a love of the game combined with a hardcore competitive streak,” says Young. “And that’s Wash. If you’re around Wash for any period of time, you’ll know that he really loves baseball. He loves everything that goes into it. And that part cannot be faked. I think you can pick up on that within minutes. And then once you get to know him a little more you find out how competitive he is and how much he values playing winning baseball.”
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His Braves will play Game 7 on Sunday for a chance to return to baseball’s Promised Land: the World Series. Washington isn’t looking past that yet — for now, he is completely and totally here — but he admits that he would like to manage again.
“I thought I almost had that opportunity this year with San Diego,” Washington admitted back in April. “I know that I can lead. I know I’ve always been a leader, ever since I’ve been in the game of baseball. So I do want to manage again, but there has to be a general manager that believes I’m the guy that can lead them where they want to go. It just depends on where they want to go.”
(Photo: Cooper Neill / MLB Photos via Getty Images)
