A Jack Of All Trades: Ron Washington
By: Arenthous Frazier
Some coaches are winners and are not player favorites. Some coaches are player favorites and have a hard time winning. Every now and again, you run into those coaches that are both. For Ron Washington, he could be considered as a coach that is both a player’s favorite and a proven winner.
Ron Washington was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on April 29th, 1952. He was pretty much the average kid growing up and coming through High School but had a real love affair with the game of baseball. He made his Major League debut as a player on September 10th, 1977, for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He spent 12 years total in the big leagues with five different teams. His career batting average was .261 with 20 home runs and 146 runs batted in. A pretty pedestrian playing career but as a manager, his career was anything but pedestrian.
He started off as a first base coach in 1996 with the Oakland A’s and went on to become the infield and third base coach until 2006. He was credited with developing young talent such as 6-time Gold Glove winner Eric Chaves, and former American League shortstop Miguel Tejada. He was also portrayed in the movie Moneyball shedding light on how a small market team was able to compete with the best teams in Major League Baseball.
In 2006, he went on to manage the Texas Rangers replacing Buck Showalter. In 2010, Washington became the second manager in Ranger history to take his team to the postseason. In the same season, he also became the first manager in Rangers history to win a playoff series, and only the third African American manager to take his team to the World Series. The two other managers were Cito Gaston and Dusty Baker. Pretty good company. On August 4th, 2013, he passed Bobby Valentine for the most wins as a Rangers manager with 582.
In 2014, Ron Washington resigned as Rangers manager citing personal reasons but would later return to coaching May 21,2015 as the Oakland A’s infield coach, and later that season became the third base coach. In October of 2016 he was hired as the Atlanta Braves third base coach and in 2021, won his first World Series as the third bas coach.
He remained with the Braves until November 2023 when he was hired as the Los Angeles Angels manager. He is currently in his second season with the Angels, as they hope to duplicate the success Ron Washington has had in his career in Major League Baseball.