White People and Ron Washington

I am a big baseball fan. It is not uncommon to see me in Texas Rangers or Houston Astros gear. Since I am the type to talk to anybody I often end up talking baseball with someone. Generally white males (probably do a future blog on black people and baseball). One thing I noticed as they all "LOVE" Ron Washington.

They talk about how great a person he seems to be, and how refreshing it is for him to be so plain-spoken and focused on the basics. They feel that his future and the future of the Texas Rangers is very promising. They will then ask me on how I feel the Rangers will do this season. To their surprise I open by saying I think the Rangers are going to "suck. "

Ron Washington does appear to be a great guy, but he has been placed in a piss poor situation. He has an owner who has little concern about this team. He hired Sammy Sosa, Eric Gagne, and Kenny Lofton to sell tickets. It is unlikely any of them will offer much by way of talent at this point in their career. The owner has hired a young GM that seems to think that the way to compensate for making a bad trade deal, is to make one even worse the next time.....

3 of the 6 best hitters on this team from 2006 have signed with other teams as free agents. There is a question mark at every single position in the outfield. They say the starting pitching is strong when there are only 2 proven pitchers on the roster. 1 of those has only had 1 promising season, the rest of his career has been very inconsistent. The other 3 prospect pitchers have not looked promising in their previous outings. The bullpen is supposed to be strong when the anchor is a guy that has not played in 2 years, and the rest of the staff is largely made up of unproven players. So all of this hope is based on "potential." The Rangers don't have enough credibility to sell me on "potential" just look at the "DVDs."

So as much as I wanted to see Buck go away, I was not overly excited about bringing in Washington. For 2 reasons: 1) I feel he has been set up for failure, 2) as a fellow UTA alumnus I feel Trey Hillman would have been the better choice between his previous MLB and minor league experience and the great success he has had in the Japanese baseball league.

So don't assume because I am black I am automatically excited about having a black manager for the Rangers, and because your white don't feel like you have to pretend to be excited when you are talking to a black person about Ron Washington....