Everybody's already heard this story, right? America loves famous people, loves drugs, and falls all over itself when famous people do drugs. Shouldn't be long before the media starts cutting famous people with knives and forks and branches they pick up just to prove that "they bleed like normal people bleed!"
Anyway, there are a number of jokes here in questionable taste that could be made. Josh Hamilton jokes. Jokes about how Ron Washington physically looks the part. Jokes about how people generally don't start dabbling in their 50s. Jokes at the Rangers' expense, jokes about how running that team can drive a man to drugs. If I really gave myself a little time I'm sure I could think of more, because I'm always astonished by my brain's capacity to function like that of a complete asshole.
But, to me, if there's any take-home message here, aside from the reminder that people make mistakes, even when they're 57, it's this: managing a baseball team is hard. It's hard work. You might get stressed out at your job, but eventually, you get to leave it. And if you take your work home with you, eventually, you get to sleep. A manager doesn't get breaks. He doesn't get days off, or opportunities to sip coffee on the patio. A manager is consumed by his work, and this doesn't even begin to address any stress he might be dealing with in his personal life. Ron Washington manages a baseball team, and he's married, and his body is getting old.
Ron Washington has a lot going on. More, I imagine, than we could ever know. This, of course, is all speculation on my part, and I could be totally off-base, but I wouldn't be surprised if Washington got to the All-Star Break, recognized a limited window of opportunity to unwind a little bit, and seized it by the balls. That he was so up-front about it before results came back suggests that he was aware he made a mistake and doesn't do this all the time. And, in the end, that renders this sort of an insignificant story. The only lesson to be learned here is that maybe next time Washington should smoke weed like everybody else.