Alright, let’s talk about Ron Washington and the Braves. See him out there before games, hitting grounders, working those infielders ragged. Dude’s got energy, you gotta give him that. Looks like real old-school, hard-nosed coaching. Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals.
Watching him just hammering away at the basics with guys who are already pros, it kinda takes me back. Not to baseball, really, but to this gig I had a few years back. We had this supervisor, let’s call him Bob. Bob got this idea in his head, probably from some management book or seminar, I don’t know. He decided we all needed to get back to the “fundamentals” of our jobs.
Now, we weren’t fielding ground balls. We were doing something completely different, office work, pushing papers and clicking buttons mostly. But Bob, he decided we needed “drills.” Seriously. He made us spend like, an hour every morning doing these super basic, repetitive tasks. Stuff we already knew how to do, stuff that wasn’t even the hard part of our job. He’d walk around, watching us, telling us to focus, like he was coaching third base or something. Called it “building muscle memory” for the job. What a load of crap.
It was painful.
Nobody liked it. It just ate into our actual work time. The real problems we had, the tricky stuff that needed figuring out? We had less time for that because we were busy doing Bob’s stupid “drills.” Morale just tanked. Felt like being treated like kids, or robots.
- People started getting grumpy.
- Mistakes actually went up on the real work, probably ’cause everyone was so annoyed or rushing later.
- Good people started quietly looking for other jobs.
I tried talking to him once. Said something like, “Hey Bob, appreciate the focus on basics, but maybe we could target the actual tricky parts?” He just gave me this look, like I didn’t understand greatness. Said something about how even the best baseball players practice the basics every day. Yeah, okay Bob, but we’re not trying to turn a double play here.
Long story short, I didn’t stick around much longer after that.
The whole vibe was just off. Felt like management was completely disconnected from what we actually did and what we needed. I found a new job and got out. Heard through the grapevine later that the whole team had massive turnover after I left. Bob’s “fundamental” drills didn’t magically fix anything, shocker.
So now when I see Ron Washington actually coaching, and you see the results on the field, guys making great plays… it hits different. He’s doing it right. He knows the game, knows the players. It’s not just yelling about basics; it’s targeted, skilled work. Bob? He was just noise, imitating something he didn’t understand. Big difference.
