‘Strasburg’
courtesy of ‘Max Cook’

The media saturation regarding Stephen Strasburg, as anyone living in D.C. or elsewhere can tell you, has maintained a heavy and steady flow since he signed on as the first round draft pick last year by the Nationals.

He’s been immortalized by newspapers, magazines, and by Major League baseball itself. As if that wasn’t enough for a young man of just 21 years in age, he can now add a song to that belt with so many notches tacked on to it in only six starts (his seventh comes tonight against the San Francisco Giants in Washington).

Singer and guitarist Steve Wynn penned the song “Phenom” with the mindset of an imagined perspective straight from the head of Strasburg.

“Phenom” is the fifth entry in The Baseball Project’s season-long Broadside Ballads series of songs that the band is giving away for free on ESPN.com and is available for downloading.

The track is slow, folksy, and really sheds some light on what it must feel like to be in the guy’s shoes. Granted, Wynn didn’t speak with Strasburg before writing this song and didn’t get to pick his brain on what it’s like to be the rookie phenom but with lyrics like,“And they say that I’m the most in the Washington Post / Sing my praises all the while on the radio dial / But in my life I’ve found / You’re dead if you look down / I just want to stick around for a while” it’s as close as anyone outside of the Nationals organization is going to get when trying to understand what it must really feel like to be a young a promising face for the game of baseball during the modern era.

Rachel Levitin

Rachel moved to DC in the fall of 2005 to study Journalism and Music at American University. When she’s not keeping up with the latest Major League Baseball news, she works on making music as an accomplished singer-songwriter and was even a featured performer/speaker at TEDxDupont Circle in 2012. Rachel has also contributed to The Washington Examiner and MASN Sports’ Nationals Buzz as a guest blogger. See why she loves DC. E-Mail: rachel@welovedc.com.