Free Republic

WASHINGTON -- Making his Major League debut after 11 sensational Minor League starts, Nationals right-hander Stephen Strasburg pitched seven innings of two-run ball against the Pirates on Tuesday, earning the win and striking out 14 in the Nats' 5-2 victory. Delwyn Young's two-run home run with two outs in the fourth was the only damage against Strasburg. Strasburg allowed just four hits and with his 14 strikeouts surpassed the Nationals' season high. The righty threw 94 pitches, 65 for strikes, and didn't walk a batter. The righty retired his final 10 batters, striking out his last seven. "More than anything,...

Stephen Strasburg will walk to the mound at Nationals Park tonight. He will fulfill a dream and, more urgently, feel a certain kind of release. The middle of a baseball diamond is the one site, more than ever, where he is most at ease, where the autograph hunters can't touch him and the cameras don't bother him. Strasburg is lucky to be so good at something he loves so much. "Pick your favorite place in the world," said Kathy Swett, Strasburg's mother, back in spring training after he made his first spring training start. "That's where he feels most comfortable....

WASHINGTON -- The Major League Rules is a sprawling, dense, little-known, 254-page document, periodically updated, that governs the business side of baseball. Among other things, it lays out, in painstaking legalese, the process and guidelines for the sport's annual draft, and in recent years, these sections have provided a road map for a certain notorious agent bent on circumventing the draft itself. In 1996, agent Scott Boras exploited a loophole to help gain free agency for four draftees who did not receive contract offers from the teams that selected them within 15 days of the draft, as required. A year...

STRASBURG, Va. - A police chief was ordered held without bail Monday on charges of driving drunk twice in one day. Middletown Police Chief Roger Ashley has been held in jail since his arrest Saturday. An April 11 trial was scheduled after a court appearance Monday. Ashley was arrested the first time in his unmarked police car and a second time, five hours later, in his personal vehicle, Strasburg Police Chief Marshall Robinson said. Officers responded to the first arrest after Robinson's car had run into a vehicle on Route 11 in this northern Virginia community. Robinson was arrested a...