The media coverage of Texas Rangers manager Ron Washington’s coke-related embarrassment on Wednesday broke down more or less as you’d expect. Daily columnists harumphed, Rob Neyer did his grumpy/rational Rob Neyer thing, and everyone prepared to move on to speculating that these drug-filled sweatpants recovered at a Kentucky airport actually belonged to Bobby Cox more important sports news. Considering that the Rangers don’t seem inclined to discipline the clearly very embarrassed Washington, it makes sense that this story would (sorry) blow over. Although the team-employee blackmail angle GC covered here does kind of thicken the plot somewhat. It’s tough to know how much more there is here, as of now, but I do know that it’s kind of tough for me to get too fired-up about it. At his blog, Tim Marchman wonders why it was a big deal in the first place.
The only proper response to the news that Texas manager Ron Washington tested positive for the drug last year is to wonder why in the blue fuck central baseball is demeaning 57-year-old men by making them piss in cups… [Washington] didn’t do anything wrong in the first place other than violate an obviously silly and unnecessary agreement with his employers, who don’t seem to be all that put out by it. This is a case where I think we can go beyond asking sports moralists to spare us the outrage and ask them to spell out exactly what’s wrong with a grown man doing his own thing in his free time.
This is perhaps a corny segue, but may I suggest that, in the hour or so that remains before the first NCAA tournament games tip, you get your buzz by picking winners at the CSTBracket, rather than by sniffing coke at the Radisson in Cleveland? Once you’ve filled out your bracket, by all means knock yourself out.