Ron Washington Admits To Previous Drug Use During Playing Career

Ron Washington has had an honest week. A day after addressing his team and holding a press conference to acknowledge his use of cocaine in 2009, he has admitted that he used other substances back when he was a player.

SURPRISE, Ariz. -- A day after apologizing for using cocaine last season, Texas Rangers manager Ron Washington said that he used amphetamines and marijuana during his playing career.

Ron Washington was signed as an amateur free agent by the Royals in 1970 and made his final Major League appearance in 1989. His professional playing career spanned two decades, and not only two decades - perhaps the two decades during which drug use among baseball players ran most rampant. It is not a surprise, then, that Washington partook, nor does his admission necessarily cast him in a worse light than anybody else who played during the era. In the end, the fact that Washington smoked weed a few times in the minors and used greenies in the bigs doesn’t really mean anything at all, as that was just part of the culture.

The timing here, though, is what’s most interesting, and one imagines that Washington feels like the more he comes clean about, the more willing people will be to take him at his word about the cocaine story. Depending on how this plays out, we’ll see if honesty really is the best policy, but right now, I’m thinking the odds favor Ron.