Tales from the clubhouse: Riggleman's resignation

I get asked often about the craziest story I've covered on the Nationals beat, and there's no shortage of choices over the last 15 years. But my answer has been consistent for a long time now: it's Jim Riggleman's surprise resignation during the 2011 season, and the chaotic 72 hours that followed.

In fact, when Michael Phillips of the Richmond Times-Dispatch (a long ago intern on the Nats beat) asked on Twitter a few days ago "What's the most random sports moment you'd watch a 10-part documentary on?" I immediately thought of the Riggleman saga. Maybe there isn't enough material to fill 10 episodes, but there's enough to warrant a miniseries.

It's hard to explain to anyone who wasn't following it at the time, but it was just so out-of-the-blue crazy. And it really had long-lasting ramifications for the organization (both positive and negative).

For those who don't remember, the 2011 Nationals went on a dramatic run in mid-June. A team that appeared to be on the upswing but clearly wasn't ready to contend yet won 11 of 12 to clear the .500 mark that deep in a season for the first time since the inaugural 2005 campaign. For the first time in a long time, the Nats were relevant to the baseball world at large, and you could see big things were coming soon.

The guy in the manager's office getting praise for this turnaround was an unlikely one. Riggleman was a baseball lifer, a former manager of the Padres, Cubs and Mariners, but rarely in the spotlight. He was a good X's and O's skipper, and he ran a tight ship, but he didn't have a particularly engaging personality. He wasn't the type of manager to command a room, someone who could rally his troops and get them to run through a wall for them.

Riggleman ascended to the Nationals' managerial position during the All-Star break in 2009. Hired by then-GM Jim Bowden to serve as a veteran bench coach for Manny Acta, he was promoted to interim manager when Mike Rizzo (who replaced Bowden as interim GM during spring training) fired Acta after a dreadful 26-61 first half to the season.

Most at the time figured Riggleman would just finish out the year and be replaced by someone else. But the Montgomery County native got a terrible team to play hard the rest of the way, going 33-42, and had the interim label taken off his title after the season.

Riggleman's contract, though, offered anything but long-term security. He was guaranteed only one year, with club options for 2011 and 2012. The Nationals brought him back for 2011, but he spent the first half of that season as a lame duck. Publicly, he said all the right things. Privately, he didn't hide his dissatisfaction with his situation.

The feeling among many in the industry was that Riggleman was a placeholder manager, someone who would capably do the job until the team was ready to contend, at which point a bigger name would be brought in to help get the club over the hump and into the postseason.

But this early-summer winning streak changed the equation somewhat. The Nationals were suddenly winning, and Riggleman rightfully felt he deserved to be recognized for it. So prior to a Thursday matinee against the Mariners, the final game of a homestand, he asked Rizzo to formally meet with him and discuss picking up his 2012 option.

And if the GM wouldn't do it? Riggleman threatened to resign after the game, win or lose.

Rizzo, as any longtime Nats observer can attest, wasn't about to bullied around like that.

"Today's conversation, put to me the way it was put to me, you certainly can't make that decision in a knee-jerk reaction," he said that evening. "It's too big of a decision to be put in that position."

Riggleman, though, didn't back down. He informed a couple of close confidants before the game he was going to resign. And moments after the Nationals finished a thrilling 1-0 walk-off victory, he returned to his office and made it official.

Inside the press conference room at Nationals Park, we all sat around waiting for what we assumed would be a typical postgame session with the manager. We had no inkling of what was actually taking place down the hall. But as 10 minutes passed, then 15, then 20, with no sign of the manager, we realized something was up.

Finally, the door opened and someone walked in: Rizzo. Now we really knew something out of the ordinary had happened.

I'll never forget that moment when Rizzo made the announcement. I don't think any of us has ever been caught so off-guard before. And it wasn't just reporters who couldn't believe what they just heard. The gasp coming from the group of fans watching next door in the Presidents Club was clearly audible through the glass windows that separates the two rooms.

Rizzo spoke for several minutes, answering several questions. He didn't yet know who was going to manage the Nats the next night in Chicago, let alone the rest of the season. In the chaotic hours that followed, he would ask John McLaren (Riggleman's loyal bench coach) to manage that weekend against the White Sox while asking Davey Johnson (at that point a special adviser to the GM based in Florida) if he'd be interested in managing for the first time in more than a decade.

But before any of that, we needed to hear Riggleman's side of the story. We made our way toward the clubhouse, and we were told the now-ex-skipper would speak to us in his office. Thing is, the manager's office at Nationals Park is not large. It can accommodate maybe a dozen people, but even that feels cramped. It certainly couldn't accommodate the number of media members who were there that day.

Riggleman, recognizing this, motioned out the door and told us to follow him into the main clubhouse. He stood right there in the middle of the room, players who had just learned their manager quit on them walking right by, and held his final press conference as a member of the Nationals organization.

"Awkward" isn't a strong enough word to describe the scene. And the awkwardness continued as we interviewed players about this shocking development. Every one of them downplayed it, trying to make it seem like it wasn't a big deal, that they were just going to show up the next day and try to win another ballgame, no matter who was managing.

That reaction spoke volumes.

It took a while to process it all, but the conclusions and opinions I drew later that evening have not changed in the nine years that have since passed.

I think Riggleman was right, on a philosophical level. He deserved to be treated better. He deserved a better contract from the beginning. He deserved to not feel like a lame duck.

But his methods for dealing with the situation were completely wrong. He had zero leverage with Rizzo. His ultimatum had no chance of working.

In my mind, Riggleman had only one option: finish out the season. If the team continued to play well, he might have received the new contract he so desperately wanted. Or he would've been fired but would've left with his reputation intact. Others around the sport would've placed the blame on the front office and perhaps given him another opportunity to manage somewhere else.

As it turned out, Riggleman did get another opportunity - seven years later. After working for the Reds as a minor league manager, he was promoted to the big league staff and was in position to replace the fired Bryan Price early in the 2018 season. Yet again, he was an interim manager. And after that season, Cincinnati decided not to make him the permanent manager.

Riggleman spent last season as the Mets' bench coach but was let go when manager Mickey Callaway was fired after only one year on the job.

The Nationals? Well, you know what's happened here. Johnson took the job and spent 2 1/2 seasons at the helm, leading the club to its first division title and first postseason appearance in 2012 before being pushed out of the dugout in 2013. Matt Williams, Dusty Baker and Davey Martinez followed with two seasons apiece, Martinez of course doing what none of his predecessors did by winning the World Series and earning a third season as manager.

Who knows how any of that would've played out if not for the events of June 23, 2011.

But here's the craziest part of it all: June 24 was an even wilder day.

I'll share that tale with you soon.