A perfect 14-year marriage: Wash and wood

ARLINGTON, Texas – The old girl beside Ron Washington is blonde and she’s beautiful.

Graying in the proper places and subtly scarred, she moves with grace and conviction.

The years have weathered her, but they’ve weathered him, too.

They’re together still because they wouldn’t know another way. One leans and the other steadies, how it’s always been.

She is, quite frankly, a little thin on the bottom by most preferences, and a little wide up top. But, she feels right in his hands, just as she always has, since the very afternoon the man from Canada delivered her, brand new.

He was in his first major league spring training camp as a coach in 1997, in Phoenix with the Oakland A’s. She was a notion, he was a little vague, and the man from Canada took down the specs on a notepad.

“I like the long one,” Washington told him. “And I like it heavy.”

A couple weeks later, the man handed her over.

“It’s this type of wood that scratches some,” he told Washington, “but it doesn’t dent.”

Going on 14 years later, Washington still carries her around. In that time, she’s helped make a Gold Glover out of Eric Chavez(notes), a first baseman out of Scott Hatteberg(notes), a third baseman out of Michael Young(notes), a shortstop out of Elvis Andrus(notes), a pennant winner out of the Texas Rangers.

Sometimes he hangs a glove on her and lays her across his shoulder. Others, he’ll walk and breezily brush the tips of the grass with her. But, mostly, she works, earns her keep.

Now, at a time the Rangers trail the San Francisco Giants in the World Series, two games to none, when they seek comfort and predictability, who better to lead them than the man who’d no sooner part with his core hardball beliefs than he would his favorite fungo bat.

As they’ve risen slowly in the American League West, then surprised many by eliminating the Tampa Bay Rays and New York Yankees, the Rangers have been pushed along by Washington’s buoyant spirit and his refusal to deviate from what served them yesterday, last week, and last month. He is a man who was married once, who called the same place home for nearly all his life, who’d resurface and re-lace baseball gloves until there was nothing left to save, who’d still be driving that 1985 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz had it not been swamped by Hurricane Katrina.

When he finds something that fits him, it becomes him. Like baseball. Like the Rangers. Like that old fungo bat. It is why those who knew him were shaken when he’d admitted to once using cocaine, and not at all surprised when he raised his chin, came clean and accepted his punishment.

“That’s just me,” he said.

So in the late-October spotlight Washington draws the rage of those who believe he should not have risked Game 1 on Vladimir Guerrero’s(notes) shaky legs, who wonder why Neftali Feliz(notes) must be coddled when games are slipping away late, and who criticize his faith in Derek Holland(notes) when the strike zone becomes a moving target.

And Washington shows up the next day, unmoved. There are games to be played still. He believes first in his ballclub and second in his loyalty to it. No apologies.

“It starts with, he’s comfortable in his own skin,” general manager Jon Daniels said. “He’s not going to be something he’s not. It goes the same way with the club.

“It’s just who he is. He’s not trying to put on an act or filter himself. It’s just, here it is.”

In a recent moment behind the batting cage, Washington weighed that fungo in his hands. The label had worn off years before. He could not guess how many baseballs had come off the bat over the years (one coach estimated 40,000 swings a year, from spring through fall, for more than a half-million grounders over its lifespan), but he recalled those who’d most often fielded those grounders.

“I think it’d have to be Bobby Crosby(notes), Mark Ellis(notes), Eric Chavez, Miguel Tejada(notes), Scott Hatteberg, Perez,” he said. “Hey, who was that kid we had, Perez?”

Antonio.

“Antonio Perez,” he said. “Nick Swisher.”

That perfect bat, carved so he could stay inside the ball on his toss and drag the head just right, survived them all. Part tool, part weapon, part toy, part companion, it is fast becoming legendary in baseball. Fungo bats last maybe a year. Long and thin, they are fragile. Relationships develop, crash, then are rekindled.

“I guess it would be like a comfortable lathe for a carpenter,” Rangers coach Clint Hurdle said. “Or a favorite doctor’s bag for a physician. In the case of Ron’s, it’s an artifact. It’s a museum piece.”

You can judge a man, Giants coach Tim Flannery said, by his fungo bat. He once had one decorated by a Native American medicine man, who adorned the handle of the bat with abalone. When he managed in the minor leagues, he’d hit infield with it and convince his players it had spiritual qualities. Alas, it shattered one night, just like the rest.

“I’ve lost some precious bats,” Flannery said. “I’ve been hurt so much by those sacred fungoes, now I get a standard SSK fungo and try not to get too attached to it.”

Flannery, in fact, was watching television in the Giants clubhouse Thursday night when the camera found Washington, who was leaning on his fungo bat and staring into the outfield. Flannery found himself wondering about the bat, drawn to its unusual color and shape, and was amazed at its history.

“Now that I know its powers over there,” he said with a grin, “if I can get it, I might have to steal it.”

Small chance of that. Like Washington, the bat survives. It serves. It shows up every day, no matter what. Maybe it doesn’t always look great, or sound quite right. But it works, and it’s real, and it’s seen it all.

“If it would have broken,” Washington said, laying her against his shoe, “I would have had to get rid of it. But, it never did break.”