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The day has finally arrived - Stephen Strasburg's major league debut. We seem to have settled on "Strasmas" for the cutesy name for the day, and the hype is bursting out every seam of the media outfit.
"Strasburg" is not yet a trending topic on Twitter. But get this - it's a trending topic nationwide. That means more people outside of the Washington area are tweeting about the Nationals phenom than there are in the District and its surrounding areas.
Take this for what it's worth, since I'm not some grizzled veteran who can compare this with Dwight Gooden or Fernando Valenzuela. But I've never seen anything like this. To think about a prospect generating this much attention nationwide is staggering to me. It shows, in some ways, how big the coverage of the minor leagues and prospects in general has gotten. We saw a little of this with Matt Wieters in Baltimore last year.
But the national attention for Wieters was nothing like this.
ESPN starts its coverage this morning, and begins a Baseball Tonight special early this afternoon. I'll be getting to the park around 1:00 or 1:30, and I'll try to give you a sense of all the behind-the-scenes barometers of how big this is. We'll have plenty more here throughout the day, and of course, the hour-long pregame show on MASN2 tonight before the 7:05 first pitch.
