New Coke

So what is the freakin' deal with Ron Washington? The Texas Rangers manager is considered to be one of the most stand-up guys in all of Major League Baseball, and greatly respected by his peers. Apparently though, Ron just up and decided one day during the 2009 season to do a little cocaine. Just once though, right Ron? This doesn't appear to make a whole lot of sense. But then neither does you being forced to pay for auto insurance, and then having the company drop you when you get in an accident. But I digress.
The reason Mr. Washington decided to ingest some cocaine one day in 2009 may never be quite clear, and to be fair, they are his reasons. Him admitting that his actions took place is necessary. The details of why, however, are not. Everyone does stupid things. Washington's stupid thing just happen to be on an extremely serious scale. The larger issue here is how the Texas Rangers decided to handle the situation.
Apparently, one day last year, Ron Washington failed a drug test. Immediately, Ron Washington offered his resignation, but this offer was turned down by team President Nolan Ryan, general manager John Daniels and other Rangers officials. Now I can only assume that the team decided to keep this quiet during the season for obvious reasons; that they didn't want this to become a distraction. However, team officials kept on keeping this secret after the season was over, and into the 2010 pre-season. Herein lies my problem with the Rangers. This shows that they had no intention of ever divulging this information to the public.
Maybe on some level the Texas organization had good intentions. If they could keep the secret buried, then Ron Washington reputation might not take a hit. But selfishness also plays a part in this, because by not admitting this event to anyone, they could avoid all the bad publicity that comes along with it. Additionally, by not revealing the information in a somewhat timely manner, such as the off-season, they proved that they were going to try and hide this information for as long as possible. Clearly, in this day in age with reporters tweeting every five minutes about the minutiae of every player and coach's life, the Rangers should have known this information was going to come out eventually. If the Rangers wanted to do the respectable thing, they should have let this information leak once the 2009 season was over, that way the outrage would have a chance to die down.
Instead, the Rangers are stuck. People threw up their collective hands once the news broke, and proclaimed Washington should be fired, and with good reason. 'Managers are supposed to be role-models. How can a manager gain the respect and cooperation of his players after this kind of incident? If I got caught doing cocaine at my job, I'd be fired on the spot!' These were just some of the arguments that made there way onto sports radio shows. So the natural thing for the Rangers to do, would've been to hand down some kind of punishment, or even potentially fire Washington. But if they weren't going to do it last year, after they had already forgiven the man and moved on, then they sure weren't going to do anything to him this year. Which makes the Texas Rangers now look like idiots.
True, they may have done a very nice thing for Ron Washington by allowing him to remain an employee after such an incident. 'Everyone deserves a second chance, right?' But now what if a player gets caught with cocaine or steroids this year, what will they do then? Well, they will probably have to follow MLB procedure and suspend that player, or possibly even release him, depending on the severity of the incident. Oh, the hypocrisy!
This is the problem with the Rangers tactics. They've dug themselves in a whole. By forgiving Ron Washington, and letting him remain in his position of power, with no punishment whatsoever, the Rangers have become the equivalent of the liberal softee would wants to release everyone from prison. Instead of standing tough, admitting there was a problem within their organization, and dealing with it themselves, they will now be used as evidence in any case of player or manager indiscretion. 'Well Ron Washington got away with doing cocaine last year, why am I being punished because I drove drunk? Ron Washington can do coke, but I can't do heroin?' Ya see? Of course, other teams will obviously not let it get to this level of compliance, but there is a precedent set for allowing bad behavior. And especially after everyone thought the steroid era was just starting to go away, this is the last thing the MLB needed.
The Texas Rangers were between a rock and a hard place. They didn't want to have to deal with the news during last season. And the team was just starting to improve, so they didn't want to screw that up by firing the manager that got them there, and start all over. But now they have to deal with the consequences of their actions. Public ridicule and outrage aren't going to do anything, but some kind of MLB sanction might. If Commissioner Bud Selig and his cronies really want to send a message that baseball is tough on drugs, and bad behavior, then they need to step in and hand down some kind of punishment. If they don't, this incident will remain the 800lbs gorilla in the room.