The redemption of Ron Washington

IT’S A LATE SATURDAY morning at the Los Angeles Angels spring training facility in Tempe, Arizona. As the sun warms the valley, two weeks before the regular season, there is no score that counts. There are no American League West standings, no defending World Series champions inside a tough division to catch, no teams above or below the Angels with whom to compare. There is only hope and the meticulous process of building it. The meter — ruthless and final — has not yet begun running.

Ron Washington, who was hired as manager of the Angels last November and charged with the mountainous task of transforming an oddly moribund team, stands behind the batting cage, surveying Field 6, with intermittent glances at the drills on adjacent fields. Arte Moreno, the 77-year-old owner of the Angels, approaches him, smiling, speaking in a near whisper. Washington doesn’t immediately notice. Moreno has held the team in his grasp since purchasing the club from the Walt Disney Company for $180 million in 2003, about six months after the Angels won the World Series in their first and only appearance.

When Washington notices Moreno, he beams, and the two embrace. “I made a mistake. I want to admit I made a mistake,” Moreno says, raising his voice and squeezing Washington’s hand. “I hired this man too late. Should have done it sooner.”

The work on Field 6 concludes as Washington, Moreno and second-year Angels general manager Perry Minasian stand in front of a short stack of metal bleachers behind the backstop. They address a group of about two dozen season-ticket holders to give their sales pitch for 2024. They explain how things will be different, how the Angels plan to capture their attention after failing to produce a single playoff appearance in six years with a roster that included Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani, how Ron Washington will be different from Phil Nevin and Joe Maddon, the two leaders who preceded him.

Washington is fired up about baseball. He always has been. Periodically, there are roars of laughter. Routinely, there is applause. His speech dips into the third person, Rickey Henderson style, but differently; Henderson did it to emphasize his place on the marquee — he had just done something big. Washington does it to make a serious point. He signs his text messages with his nickname and an exclamation point (“We’re going to make the Angels relevant again! — Wash!”). The people listening are now fired up, too.

“What did I tell them?” Washington says later. “I told them that I’m confident they’ll be excited about what we do. I want them to feel like they can’t wait to see what this team is going to do next.” Washington then repeats the mantra he told the last team he managed, the one that made winning feel possible, when he ran the Texas Rangers from 2007 to 2014.

“We don’t have to be the best team. We just have to be the better team that day.”

The spark was lit, and it was obvious: The Los Angeles Angels need Ron Washington. They are a team that occupies a bizarre place in that land of baseball’s moribund franchises. The team hasn’t had a winning season since 2015 — the closest they’ve come to first place was the truncated pandemic year of 2020, when they were 10 games out. The team is on its third manager in three years.

The Angels need Washington, but Washington needs the Angels, too. He is arguably the most respected coach in the game, the winningest manager in Texas Rangers history — the guy for whom players would run through a wall. But despite a .520 career winning percentage across 1,275 games as a manager, which includes four straight 90-win seasons and consecutive American League pennants in 2010 and 2011, personal issues locked Washington out of managing for 10 years.

At 71, with nearly six decades of service in the game, Washington’s reputation as one of baseball’s great people earned him an unexpected second chance at managing. It is a reputation that he knows cannot withstand a third strike.

EVERYTHING ABOUT Ron Washington is work. In 1968, when Washington was 16, the Hall of Famer Frank Robinson released an autobiography titled, “My Life is Baseball.” The same applies to Washington. His first year in professional baseball was 1970. He was no bonus baby, one of those can’t-miss prospects the world couldn’t wait to see. There was no glamour. He started in the Royals system and stood there for five years before making it to the big leagues. In 1977, he made his major league debut at 25 with the Dodgers as a September call-up. He got into 10 games, fought the numbers game and a torn-up knee, got loaned to the Mets and didn’t play in another big league game until 1981, with the Twins. Washington says he always played the game the right way, because there was no margin for any alternative. His fundamentals, attention to detail and his understanding of the game, were not a substitute for talent — they were his talent.

Washington admits it all sounds cliché, but says, “There is a way to do things, and there’s definitely a wrong way to do things.”

His legend began with teaching. In 1998, Washington, then an infield and third base coach, stepped onto the field for pregame work with Oakland, fortified by coffee, Fritos and a pack of Winstons. He was there, on his knees, tapping fungoes to rookie shortstop Miguel Tejada. Opposing coaches and baseball men marveled at the granularity of his teaching — they just don’t teach like that at the professional level. Just see the ball all the way into the glove. That’s it.

“Some of the guys, including myself, I watch him go about his business and I say to myself, ‘I need to do a better job of being like he is,'” says San Francisco Giants manager Bob Melvin, who had Washington on his staff for two years.

Tejada finished the 1998 season with 26 errors, but he never again recorded that many in a single season. Washington did the same with his rookie third baseman, Eric Chavez. Every single day. In 2001, when Chavez won the first of six consecutive Gold Glove Awards, Chavez gave one to Washington, out of respect.

“He’s inspiring. He’s upbeat. No challenge is ever too much for him,” Melvin says. “There are very few guys who have impacted players that Ron Washington has, especially in a coaching role.”

Washington began to see the pathway to managing in Oakland. He had managed in the Dominican Winter League, but it was unclear if he would get a shot at the big league level. The game was speeding toward numbers, the analytics revolution, the Moneyball Era. In Oakland, then-general manager Billy Beane was one of Washington’s biggest supporters. Beane would hire two managers — Ken Macha after the 2002 season and Bob Geren after the 2006 season — but not Washington. If Oakland, which knew him best, would not hire him, it was not guaranteed that he would be more attractive elsewhere.

In 2006, Washington interviewed with Texas Rangers president Nolan Ryan and general manager Jon Daniels for the managerial job after Buck Showalter was fired. Wash called me in the days following that interview, and his enthusiasm was apparent. Though he’d never been given the chance, he knew he could run a ballclub. “I don’t know if I’ll get it or not,” he said to me then, “but I know I impressed those muthaf—as.”

Less than a month later, the Rangers hired him. He was 54, many years older than the age when managers traditionally receive their first opportunity. For the first few years, he did not like the top job — the one that paid the $1 million salary, the one coaches and players coveted their whole lives. Washington was now at the pinnacle, but maybe he preferred doing early work as a coach.

The main problem was communication. The modern player couldn’t be spoken to the way he had been, savaged by Tommy Lasorda and a dozen of different managers. The Wash Way — blunt, direct, man-to-man — did not translate. He tried to connect with players, but they would go to their agents, who would then complain to Daniels, and his authority in the clubhouse was undermined.

Everything changed when he and Michael Young bonded. Then the Rangers acquired third baseman Adrian Beltre in free agency after the 2010 season. Young was the veteran captain. Beltre was the clubhouse voice the young Latino players needed, the man whom players respected and who could get the manager’s points across. Young and Beltre became Washington’s spears of lightning, his extensions.

Now, he could be himself.

HE WASN’T SURE he would survive the first strike. Something was up before anyone knew the specifics. During spring training 2010, different managers around the league were being asked to submit to random drug tests, as if they were players. A shoe was dropping, but on whom? And for what?

It was about to drop on Washington, who failed a drug test a year earlier during the All-Star break. Now, Washington was faced with admitting the news. Before word went public, everyone assumed it was marijuana, an annoying but mild offense. Washington, though, had tested positive for cocaine, and everything he had built, one fungo at a time, was crumbling around him. He had already packed his bags before calling Ryan.

“I told them I expected them to fire me,” Washington told me that year. “I told them I understood it and I deserved it. I said I knew I was through as a manager, but I asked them if they would help me with one thing: If they would help me save my career in baseball.

“I went in to see Nolan and I told him what I had done. I told him I messed up and I took full responsibility. I told him I was packing my stuff. He told me, ‘We’re a family. We’ll handle this together.’

“You have no idea what that meant to me.”

Ryan stuck with Washington, and six months later, the Rangers were in the World Series for the first time, having beaten the defending champion New York Yankees for the AL pennant.

Washington had become iconic in Texas. T-shirts were made with his silhouette on the front, accompanied by his folksy saying for not being rewarded after doing things the right way or perhaps benefiting undeservedly: “That’s The Way Baseball Go.”

Washington also holds the distinction of carrying the cruelest fate in the history of the game — no manager and his team have come as close to winning but then losing the World Series. It was Game 6 in St. Louis. The Rangers were a strike away from winning the championship — not once, but twice, in the ninth and 11th innings.

THE SECOND STRIKE nearly finished his career. The Rangers crashed in 2014, finishing 67-95. With 12 games remaining in the season, Washington left the team. He said he needed to attend to a personal matter. Two weeks later, he gave a news conference where he admitted to having an extramarital affair. Some baseball executives were perplexed. Infidelity in baseball was about as routine as a fly ball, and yet not only was Washington not planning to finish the season, but his career was in jeopardy.

The situation was murky, the details murkier. Washington resigned, and when the season ended, the Rangers announced they would be searching for a new manager. The team hired Jeff Banister, and for one of the first times in his life, Ron Washington was out of the game of baseball.

There were only rumors about the severity of what had occurred. According to multiple league sources, the matter was so uncomfortable that then-commissioner Bud Selig took a personal interest in the matter.

Multiple sources said that in one of his last acts as commissioner, Selig demanded that no team should hire Washington to manage, which the MLB commissioner’s office has denied. Whether Washington faced an official private ban, or an unofficial one, or if teams simply saw him as too great of a risk after two scandals, the end result was the same: Washington would not be hired to manage for another 10 years.

IN EARLY 2015, the A’s weren’t catching the ball, and no one in the game knows how to correct infield play like Washington. So A’s general manager Billy Beane put Washington, supposedly untouchable after his resignation a year prior, on the payroll as an advisor to the coaching staff. Beane, his assistant GM David Forst and Melvin all vouched for Washington. A few months into the season, Washington took over his old Oakland position: third-base coach. Like Chavez, Marcus Semien eventually dedicated the Gold Glove he won that year to Washington.

“When I left Texas, I didn’t go and run somewhere and hide. I worked hard to stay in the game, because I love it, because I had something to offer.” Washington says now. “The people who vouched for me, they didn’t want me to be absent in the game, and that meant everything.”

Back at spring training in Tempe, Washington pulls a long drag on his morning Winston. These conversations about his personal life are not easy for him. Nor is it easy for Washington to reflect on how close he was to losing the sport he loves. Baseball is a closed business, littered historically with people shut out behind its doors.

“It meant everything. It meant I got another opportunity. It meant they know the person,” Washington says. “The thing is, when I had my issues in Texas, my issues didn’t hurt anybody but Ron Washington and his family. I didn’t do something that hurt somebody else. I made some bad decisions. I’m human. That’s it. I’m human.

“The bad decisions I made, I didn’t run and hide. I stood up and took the bullets, because I did it. Nobody else did what happened to me. I did it.”

Washington remained with the A’s for the 2015 season, and in the offseason, he interviewed with the Braves to become their next manager, his first shot since resigning from Texas. He didn’t get the job, losing out to Brian Snitker, but joined Snitker’s coaching staff.

Washington later interviewed for the Padres’ top job in 2020. He thought he had it, but San Diego hired Jayce Tingler, who lasted just two seasons.

In the meantime, Washington inspired and taught and won. The Braves won the 2021 World Series with Washington coaching third base. It did not erase the memory of 2011, but for the first time in his career, Washington was part of a championship team.

AT FIRST MENTION of the Angels around the Cactus League, the immediate response is dismissive. The phrase “bad organization” rolls off the tongue of many baseball executives. The Angels are hounded by a specter encompassed in a single, incredulous sentence: How could a team with Trout and Ohtani not win? It is a specter that looms past the 405 freeway, as Ohtani, baseball’s $700 million man, now plays for the Dodgers. The granularities of the farm system, the inability to develop pitchers to build around two superstars and two nearly $500 million in combined free agent misses in Albert Pujols and Anthony Rendon offer bitter explanations.

The Angels are troubled, but they are not the A’s, a 112-loss team in 2023 that might very well lose 112 more this season. They are not the White Sox, who cannot compete financially, without a lifeboat in sight. On June 28 of last year, the Angels were in the top half of the league, in second place in the West, just five games out of first.

A month later, with Washington coaching third base for the Braves, the Angels beat Atlanta 4-1. They were 56-51 on the season. After that, they lost 26 of their next 35, finishing the season 73-89. Moreno fired his manager, Phil Nevin.

But unlike the A’s and White Sox, the Angels are not destitute. It’s a team of enormous resources and assets. They still have Trout, and they have Southern California. People come to the ballpark. In the 17 years Moreno has owned the club, the Angels drew at least three million fans every year.

And that damning question that has become the Angels’ reputation is partially misleading. Ohtani and Trout wore the same uniform from 2018 to 2023, but Trout isn’t the Trout of 2012-2019: the Trout who won Rookie of the Year, compiled eight straight top-5 MVP seasons, won the award three times and was being compared to the greatest players in history. He has played 100 games in a season only once after the 2019 season.

Minasian, the Angels GM, talks about baseball being played in Anaheim “the right way” and presented to the public “the way we remember it.” He uses these phrases while being reluctant to revisit the underachieving Ohtani-Trout years. “Everything,” he says, “is about looking ahead.”

If the organization has adopted the collective mantra of “getting back to basics,” the converse must be true: The organization has somewhere lost its way. Washington is here to tear down the habits and the work ethic, down to the studs. Rebuild it, and develop the callouses that must come before the victories.

When Minasian thought of what he needed in a manager, two words recurred: respect and belief. He needed someone who could put that belief into action. He thought of Tommy Lasorda, Sparky Anderson and Tom Kelly. He needed a presence.

“Working with Wash in Texas. Working with Wash in Atlanta, obviously, I had a great relationship with him,” Minasian says. “I knew what he was about and felt like he was the perfect fit for our situation.

“Once you’re around this man, it’s hard not to get excited.”

THIS SPRING, THE Angels’ theme has been rediscovery. Rediscovery of routine, habits, discipline, accomplishment over entitlement — all of the work required before even thinking about the word “winning.” Washington is here to readjust the Angels.

Bobby Valentine, the former big league manager who joined the Angels as an instructor this summer, loves his energy. “This is how you run a camp,” he says. “Everybody buying in. Everybody pulling in the right direction. Now we gotta leave camp with this kind of attitude.”

Washington is sitting on a metal bench, dragging a morning smoke — Winstons, as always — still fired up about baseball. Aside from the Angels’ most successful period — winning the World Series in 2002 and making the playoffs six times in the decade — the franchise has always had a country club reputation. The place where aging stars could play out their days in the sun. Reggie Jackson. Dave Winfield. Pujols. During the first week of camp, Washington inherited the controversy of Rendon’s dedication. In February, the third baseman said that he plays baseball “to make a living” and that the sport has “never been a top priority” for him. The comments struck hard. Rendon hasn’t played 60 games in a season with the Angels since signing a seven-year, $245 million contract in 2019.

Washington immediately protected Rendon. “It’s hard to play this game when your body isn’t right,” he says. “Sometimes you do yourself a disservice trying to do things your body won’t let you on the field.” Still, Rendon’s comments tapped into the vein of the Angels’ reputation as the place where players could be ambivalent about baseball and winning — leave that dedication stuff to the Dodgers, or the insanity of the Boston-Philadelphia-New York markets.

“We need some dogs here,” Washington says. “This isn’t a country club. In Atlanta, those guys battled. They were hungry. They were coming to beat your ass. And if they lost, they were mad. You knew the next day they were coming in hungrier. It only took a day — not four or five days — for those guys to reset and dedicate themselves to kicking your ass.”

There’s also the perception that the franchise allows inexperienced prospects inside the big leagues, without being ready for big league demands. Minasian is unafraid to call up players from any minor league level, because he believes that pressure will fuel competition. Washington respects this but worries that it could create entitlement, without the attitude built on the callouses, on smelling the bus fumes, in the hard days of the minor leagues perfecting the craft. Last year, Minasian called up first baseman Nolan Schanuel (the 11th overall pick) after playing only 22 games in the minors. He did the same with right-hander Ben Joyce, who made his debut last year after only 29 minor league games.

It all runs counter to Washington, who played 564 games in the majors and 1,321 in the minors. He learned his toughness and repetition in the minors. “Just being up here don’t make you a big leaguer,” he says. “Just being up here doesn’t make you a professional.

“I’m not a perfectionist. I like to try to do things right because I know there’s no perfection in this game, and if I do it right, and it turns out wrong, it won’t affect me mentally because I did what I was supposed to do. You can always do the right thing in the game of baseball and not get the right result. That’s what I’m trying to get these young kids to understand. They think when things don’t go right, it’s the end of the world. When things don’t go right, you go to work.”

IN A SPORT OF FAILURE, Washington is the rare baseball optimist, but even he did not think he would be managing again. His personal issues weren’t the only barriers to getting hired again. Teams have been reluctant to hire men in their 70s. But in baseball, the last two World Series champions were 73-year-old Dusty Baker and 68-year-old Bruce Bochy. Like Washington, both held reputations for creating belief in their players. So, Minasian bet on the sum of Washington’s contributions to the game, believing that mistakes do not always define a man’s character.

“Take away the results, and he’s a winning person,” Minasian says. “Nobody’s perfect. Everybody makes mistakes. You learn from your mistakes and you keep going and you keep believing and that’s what he’s all about.”

As the season began, outside expectations were low. In Baltimore, the Angels got demolished in their first two games, 13-4 and 11-3. Before the series finale, Washington held a pregame meeting, and the team won 4-1. They went on to win four more of their next six games.

Afforded a new chapter, Washington is convinced 2014 will be a part of his story and not the end of it. Washington says he’s back where he needs to be. Cigarettes. Coffee. Fritos. Third person when impassioned. Exclamation points on text messages.

“I stood up for what I did wrong, and then I continued to try to make a difference, even if it was in another capacity. I didn’t run away because baseball is my life,” Washington says. “People like Billy Beane and Bob Melvin and Dave Forst and the Oakland organization that know Ron Washington, even though Ron Washington is human and has issues just like everybody else — they understood who Ron Washington is, and they were willing to give me an opportunity.

“I’m glad I’m one of those that it worked for, and all I can do is give back.”