Brush with greatness: U.L. Washington

 

I admit that I address only the best parts of my job in these "Brush With Greatness" segments.

 

Interacting with Major League Baseball players is pretty cool. You deal with plenty of garbage in this business (whenever my fellow co-workers hear someone from another profession squawking about the woes of their job, we often sniff, "wouldn't last a day in our job." And for the most part, we believe what we say). So the occasional baseball assignment balances things out a little.

 

As a young sportswriter, I couldn't believe my luck when my editor told me I would be covering the New York-Penn League Class A baseball team in Niagara Falls. It was a new team, called the Niagara Falls Rapids and affiliated with the Detroit Tigers. My boss was giving me full reign, even though I'd been on the job for less than a year. 

 

For the Rapids' season-opener, I was on the field with a fellow sportswriter, a veteran of these kinds of things, for all the pregame pomp and circumstance that goes with the first game of the first season of a new team. Former Indians player Rick Manning, a native of Niagara Falls, was there as kind of the key celebrity for the event. But for me, the greatest part of the evening -- aside from watching the ballgame -- was seeing U.L. Washington. 

 

Washington, as those who watched baseball during the 1980s know, was the starting shortstop for the Kansas City Royals between 1980-84. He took over for Freddie Patek and had his best season in 1980, the year the Royals reached the World Series. But what a 14-year-old like myself noticed most that year was that Washington didn't go anywhere without a toothpick in his mouth. He would come up to bat and the toothpick would be there. He would play the field, and the toothpick would be there. I'm sure my mother might have spotted him while we were watching a game and said, "Oh, he's going to choke on that thing." We thought it was awesome.

 

When I found out that U.L. Washington was the manager of Niagara Falls' opponent, the Welland Pirates (a Pittsburgh farm team), I immediately flashed back to watching him play and wondered if Washington had scrapped the toothpick. "He's a manager," I thought. "He's got to be serious now."

 

Well, we spotted Washington before the game, and he was still flashing that toothpick. I felt a strange connection between my life as a young teenage fan and my current life as an adult trying to make his way in a new career. Meanwhile, U.L. Washington had undergone some career changes, too. But the toothpick was right where it always was, in the corner of his mouth. 

 

I interviewed Washington after the game. There was a controversy over one of the Niagara Falls players batting out of turn and Welland played the game under protest. Washington was pleasant and explained his thought process about the entire play. I don't remember if he had the toothpick in his mouth when he was being interviewed. It may have been in his hand. It's a moment I will always remember.

 

Washington, now a hitting instructor in the Red Sox organization, was the first big league player I had ever interviewed. And I remember thinking after I talked to him and had written my story: "This job is going to be all right."