4
Embracing the Pause
“Is he still there?” my husband whispered as I held my phone to my ear.
It was almost midnight, and we had been asleep. I get work calls all the time. I buy pajamas with pockets in them for my cell phone. Negotiations don’t respect the nine-to-five workday.
I muted the phone, but I was still whispering.
“Yes!”
I couldn’t blame Fred for asking. For several long, long, looooong seconds, only silence had come from the phone speaker.
On the other end of the call was Atlanta Braves general manager Frank Wren. The last thing I had said was that my ask on behalf of Jeff Francoeur was firm.
This was the pause between the ask and what we were both trying to avoid: arbitration. The longer the seconds stretched out, the more I felt ...
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