If Ron Washington picks up a fine this year, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig may want to have a Coinstar machine ready.
The Texas Rangers manager told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that he was so upset with a $200 fine he earned two years ago that he sent in the money in pennies. That's 20,000 coins, if you were counting.
The incident in question occurred during a game in March 2011 when Washington left the dugout to protest Adrian Beltre getting thrown out of the game.
"I lost my mind,” Washington said. “Beltre was yelling from the dugout, ‘It was outside!’ And the umpire threw him out of the game because he told Beltre to stop and Beltre didn’t stop. And then I went out there and argued with him and I said something I shouldn’t have said.”
Washington was tossed from the game but decided to stay in the dugout for the rest of the afternoon. In a move the league would later regret, MLB doubled Washington's fine because he didn't leave the dugout.
Washington somehow scraped together 20,000 pennies and, for $45, shipped it to Bob Watson, MLB's vice president in charge of discipline, in New York. Watson called Washington to ask if he just had tens of thousands of pennies lying around.
“Yes," Washington said. "Bob, I didn’t have my checkbook. I wasn’t trying to be funny. Now go to the bank and put that in the [change] machine and get your $200.”
Luckily for MLB, Washington normally keeps his temper under control. He was not ejected at all in 2013, and he was only tossed a total of three times in 2012 and 2011 combined.
And capers involving multi-coin payments have turned out worse:
