Wash and the Commodore

My actor friend Joseph Rende soon departs our shores to take to the stage in Virginia, and one night in the public house he told me, "Scott, it's about the work."

Joe's aphorism could just as easily, just as cleanly come off the lips of Texas Rangers manager Ron Washington, who waited year after year in Oakland outside the boss' office, hat in hand, waiting to hear if he would at last receive the big promotion he'd been yearning for. Would he make partner in the firm?

Athletics fans have seen lackey after clean-shaven lackey take the ship's controls under the watch of Commodore Billy Beane. While Beane's watch continued and his legend grew, his earnest infield instructor and third-base coach Washington appeared to possess the essentials: chain-smoker like Jimmy Leyland, uncanny tutor of the craft like Mike Scioscia, clubhouse favorite like Dusty Baker.

But no true architect, from Frank Lloyd Wright to Arthur Dyson to Henry Doelger, enjoys being told precisely how he will be designing his houses. Yet Beane capsized this assumption about our sport, as he has so many others; a man who would not read Beane's nautical tables, let alone faithfully follow them, would not be steering dear Billy's ship.

To understand Washington's world, reader, dig underneath the obtuse exterior of Joe Rende's statement, one I figure must make sense to the gaggles of actor-women that routinely surround him and his conspirator Patrick Alparone during smoke breaks on our city sidewalks. Ron still throws batting practice to his charges; for workouts he keeps his Rangers out of the oppressive Texan heat all but one afternoon of every homestand. Perhaps most relevant to any comparison to my actor friend, Washington professes his desire to see his team "play good baseball," as if winning will simply take care of itself in the end.

The four men Ron Washington beat out to assume his current position in Arlington have all since been given their chance to call the shots for crap teams: Trey Hillman, Royals; Manny Acta, Nationals; Don Wakamatsu, Mariners; and John Russell, Pirates. Yes, I know, they're peas in a pod - mediocre ballplayers who put in their time in the bus leagues (or on foreign soil) and have given decades of service to the game. (Indeed, name me a baseball man who transitioned from truly great player to truly great manager. Player-managers like Pete Rose and Frank Robinson are exempt from the debate. I'm one of the few baseball fans my age who bothers to accredit Joe Torre's playing career, and he did win an MVP award, but he was by no means great. Neither was Billy Martin.)

Wash, whom the Dallas press wrote off once already, has helped keep the Rangers in American League West contention as we near the break. He took over a crummy team and they are threatening to be, and stay, good. Joe Maddon already turned that trick in Tampa Bay, but he and Wash don't exactly see the game (or the world) the same way, right? How has Wash succeeded while other tried-and-true "baseball men" have failed? Is his good fortune due in part to Rangers general manager Jon Daniels, who gave Wash the thumbs-up when all seemed lost in the 2008 campaign's tender stages? Was it Wash's ability to downplay an alleged feud with the now-departed Mark Texieira?

Nowadays Beane's A's deploy young sailors like Trevor Cahill, waiting for the moment when he and others can be, as the lady in the Lucky supermarket adverts often said, "picked at the peak of freshness" by another club. Matt Holliday is dying to get back into a ballpark that makes him look less like a post-Braves Ryan Klesko. If the Rangers overtake Arte "Monopoly Man" Moreno and his Angels at the wire, leaving the A's in the dust once more, Commodore Beane will have to wonder if he finally wants a second opinion on his decisions, any of his decisions, down in that rathole of a Coliseum locker room.

In the meantime, Wash will puff on his Winstons, tell Josh Hamilton to "make it a good one, Strap" as Gene Hackman did to the praying player on his bench in "Hoosiers," and continue to tell the rest of his charges that it's about the work.