Posts Tagged ‘stephen strasburg’
The Lerners Should Thank Scott Boras
I was in a diner in Delaware this morning killing time before a funeral. An old guy in the booth beside me, who had been rifling through newspapers, started complaining to his wife about not being able to find out "if he signed or not."
I had to know. I turned around and asked, "Who are you talking about?"
"Stephen Strasburg," he said.
Cheap Seats Daily: It’s Not Over ’til the Fat Lady Signs! Or Agrees! Whichever Comes First!
Stephen Strasburg and the Nationals played chicken, like those hot rodders in "Rebel Without a Cause."
That made for an amazing night to not watch sports, and just refresh this and that web page every few minutes hoping for some Breaking News. Would Strasburg be without a contract? Would the Lerners be without another top draft pick AND a fan base?
My mom's favorite writer, Chico Harlan, was like a political speechwriter on a close election night who has to write both a victory and concession speech, knowing that half his work will be wasted.
In a post made less than an hour before zero hour, Harlan admitted on his Nationals Journal blog that because his own deadlines were approaching he'd had to write two stories, one for the Lerners caving, one for the pitcher caving, before knowing what happened. (Everybody was filing news-free reports 'round midnite. The Associated Press write-up was headlined "Strasburg, other 1st-round picks go to deadline.")
At 12:18 a.m., Chico filed the bulletin report that Strasburg was signed, and attributed the news to Baseball America. Two minutes later, Chico filed one of his fab pre-fab pieces -- headlined "It's Done: Strasburg Signs" -- with the amount of the contract, $15.7 million guaranteed, filled in. The only clue that this was a dummy piece: Chico's story didn't attribute the information to anyone or anything.
Then, within minutes of the climactic posting, Chico changed the headline to "It's Done: Strasburg Agrees."
Which, you know, coulda been the headline for the unused post, too. (Not to go all CSI on Chico, but the link to the updated post, even with the new, CYA headline, still ends with "its_done_strasburg_signs.html")
(AFTER THE JUMP: The fat lady's going to sing at Nats Park? Clemens makes a comeback? Eastern High football makes a comeback? Just like Dick Cheney, Darth Vader's going to throw out a first pitch?)
Cheap Seats Daily: If the Redskins Waiting List Is 200,000 People Long, Why Was Dan Snyder’s Ticket Staff Working So Much OT?
The Great Dan Steinberg™ had a fab story over the weekend about former employees of Dan Snyder's ticket office suing the Redskins for overtime pay. The Redskins don't dispute the claim that the staff worked overtime. The team's basis for not paying OT, however, is that the ticket sales office is in the "amusement and recreation" realm, and therefore its workers are not covered by federal wage/hour laws.
Not only is this argument a silly one -- the overtime exemption covers folks like lifeguards and greenskeepers -- but, it's guaranteed to be a loser, too: As Steinberg reports, it's already been litigated at the federal level in a case involving employees of an NBA team.
So Snyder's going to lose here, surely as he lost a wage/hour dispute with his nanny. In that case, Snyder's legal case seemed to be no more complex than that she wasn't paid because he didn't want to.
But even if he weren't gonna get poleaxed legally in the sales staff case, the question remains: If Snyder's really got a waiting list of 200,000 people desperate to buy tickets for his football team, which he says often, why would he have even one ticket seller, let alone an entire staff of ticket sellers, working overtime?
In any case, good to see that the move from urbane, aware Petworth to rural, la-dee-dah Silver Spring hasn't sapped Steinberg of his special powers.
Yet...
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The Washington Post's Jason Reid blogs that the Redskins will no longer let anybody but their own employees Twitter from practice anymore.
(AFTER THE JUMP: Will the Twitter ban on non-Redskins employees affect WRC sports staff? How come football Hoyas stink? Lou Dobbs fiddles as the Asian Bias™ in golf comes home to roost? Stephen Strasburg should hold out til tomorrow? The Tom Boswell Curse wasn't real?)
