Work Text:
“Hey Dana, I’ve got Falconer PR on the phone, they want to set up an interview for tomorrow.” Natalie holds out her headset as Dana passes by.
“On the phone?”
“No in person.”
“I meant, they called? Not an email?”
“It’s a phone call.”
Dana takes the headset, “I wasn’t aware that people still made phone calls for interview requests. Yes, this is Dana – yes..”
There’s little noise from Dana as she’s railroaded by a faster talking PR rep acting like all she’s doing is making a routine phone call. That’s not what the rep sounded like, and really who can remember all their names, but her voice was as thin and fake as cotton candy, a bit of deceptive fluff.
“Exclusive?” Dana finally says, “What kind of exclus– yes, we’ll take it, but what…we’ll see. Yes. Of course. Thank you.” Dana blinks for a moment, then hands back the headset. “Okay, Natalie, we need to free up five minutes in tomorrow’s show.”
“Five minutes?” Natalie repeats.
“Five minutes. And prep for an in-person interview.” Dana starts walking towards the bullpen.
“Five minutes? Who do we have five minutes with?” Natalie falls in step, “I mean it matters. Because the Falconers, good team, but it’s the off-season. They aren’t news.”
“I think that we cover a lot of a lot of things while they are in their off-season, and if a major sports outlet asks for five minutes with the term exclusive we are not in a position to say no. Can you pull Casey and Dan out of their office?”
The request is cryptic and strange, and a phone call. A real life phone call and not one of the dozen emails Dana gets asking for time to try to rehabilitate the image of a player who is “young” and “made a terrible mistake” and is “fundamentally a good boy”, but there’s no recent scandals on the Falconers. Nothing that needs a media blitz.
“Who are we making time for?” Casey asks as he and Dan settle into the room. Jeremy follows
“Why are we caring about hockey in June? Isn’t June the opposite of hockey season? There isn’t snow, the players haven’t been carved out of ice yet.” Dan asked.
“I don’t think they actually do that.” Natalie says.
“Zimmerman.”
“Jack Zimmerman?” Casey says, jaw dropping just a little bit, “He who answered a question about boxer or briefs with, and I quote, ‘I just want to play hockey’. That Jack Zimmerman wants five minutes.”
“Yes. With us.”
“From the Falconers?”
“Do you know another Jack Zimmerman?”
“What the hell does Jack Zimmerman want to talk to us about for five minutes?”
“The burdens of a sports legacy?” Dan answers.
“Recovering from addiction and managing anxiety within professional sports?” Jeremy offers.
“A round table discussion on college athletics as a training ground for professional players?”
“Jack Zimmerman could offer us five minutes to discuss his senior capstone paper on the Franco-Prussian War and we would air it just for the sheer novelty of getting Zimmerman to say something off-script.” Dana interrupts, “Dan, Casey — figure out how you want to prepare for this, and Natalie —get more details from their PR for guidelines. Let’s fit it into the first half.”
Moving into our new digs in Providence! @omgcheckplease
I’m proud and honored to be the face of @youcanplay, and to share my home with the man I love. @jackplayshockey
“So…” Dan says.
“So…” Casey says.
“What were you going to ask questions about?”
“What was I going to ask questions about?”
“Yeah, for the Zimmerman interview. I was thinking we could start with the Franco-Prussian War and then move to getting the real dirt on that boxers or briefs questions.”
“Or we could ask him about his boyfriend.” Casey offers.
“Otto Von Bismarck was an interesting guy."
“Dan.”
“Bismarck was an interesting guy.” Dan explains, “I’m sure he has opinions."
“Why don’t we end with that.”
“I figured we could end with boxer or briefs.”
“Or we could ask about his boyfriend.”
“We should probably focus on that.”
“Hockey news in the off-season.” Casey says, “What is the world coming to?”