Ron Washington, the manager of Texas Rangers, had tested positive for cocaine during the 2009 season, as per recent reports.

Washington told Sportsillustrated.CNN.com by phone from Surprise, Arizona, “I did make a mistake and I regret that I did it”.

The Rangers have accepted an apology from Washington and retained him as the manager after Washington said that this was a one-time transgression.

From Sportsillustrated.cnn.com:

Major league managers, coaches and other clubhouse personnel have been subject to drug testing since 2008, when MLB adopted the measure as one of George Mitchell’s recommendations as part of his report regarding steroid and drug use in baseball. MLB mandates that any non-playing personnel who either fail a test or admit to drug use be subject to counseling and a substance-abuse program developed by a doctor approved by baseball. First-time offenders are generally not subject to punitive measures such as a suspension, pending the commissioner’s discretion, and their names are not made public. (Tests are administered randomly once a year to all non-playing personnel who work around the clubhouse, which also includes trainers, clubhouse and equipment managers, massage therapists and traveling secretaries.) So by calling MLB headquarters even before his test results were known, Washington was subjecting himself to the substance-abuse program regardless of the results.

“I cannot comment on anyone in the program unless it’s a performance-enhancing substance issue,” MLB spokesman Pat Courtney wrote in an e-mail to SI.com on Tuesday.

The Rangers were quite alarmed at admission of their manager but decided to retain him on the belief that he would not slip again in the future.