Strasburg Sells

It was inevitable that Stephen Strasburg, the Nationals’ wunderkind pitcher, would make a lot of people other than himself a lot of money, and that he might even make some of them famous, too. The first person to try for rich and famous on the Strasburg train? Washington Post sports reporter Dave Sheinin, who—as Publishers Marketplace reported last night—has sold a book on Strasburg’s debut season to Gotham Books, a division of Penguin. No word on how much the deal was for, even in the veiled parlance of the publishing world, which subdivides contracts into codes such as “nice,” “good,” and “significant” as substitutes for dollar figures. But one has to imagine Sheinin’s going to get solid money for this. Strasburg has drawing power far outside Washington—if he didn’t, Sports Illustrated would never have put him on the cover. And even if he didn’t, the mania for him in Washington would probably make for solidly reasonable sales. After all, if the guy can anchor a baseball franchise, he can help one writer make a living, right?

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Alyssa Rosenberg