Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 793, Signing Professional Athletes.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 793.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Our website is eslpod.com.
If you want to support this podcast, if you want to keep us going into the future, become a member.
Help support us by becoming a © BF-WATCH TV 2021
To sign them means to get them to become a member of that team.
Let's get started.
I don't care what it takes.
I want Robinson on my team next year.
He'll be a free agent, and he'll be fielding a lot of offers.
I don't know if we can make him an attractive enough deal.
We'll offer him a signing bonus.
That should sweeten the deal.
I'm afraid that may not be enough.
Don't forget that he was a first-round pick in the draft.
Then we'll give him a no-trade clause.
With that, he'll be calling the shots and won't have to worry about being traded to a team he doesn't want to be on.
He should be happy with that.
I don't know.
His agent expects a lot of competing offers.
We'll have to pull out all the stops if we want to land him.
Then we'll do it.
We won't be bested by any other team.
Like last year?
Last year?
Don't remind me of last year.
This episode is called Signing Professional Athletes.
Jamie says, A free agent is when you have A sports player, an athlete, who doesn't have a contract with a team or his contract is over and now he can sign a contract with whomever he wants.
That's a free agent.
Fielding comes from the verb to field f-i-e-l-d, and that means to receive and have to respond to.
Usually we use this verb when people are asking questions.
The person who answers the questions fields the questions.
He or she takes the questions and tries to answer them.
But you could also use the verb as it is in this dialogue to mean to look at evaluate, accept or reject offers to come to a certain team or a certain company.
When we say a player is fielding offers, we mean that many different teams are sending him or her ideas, proposals to get the person to sign with their team.
An offer is proposal.
Here's how much money we will pay you if you play for our team.
Jamie says, I don't know if we can make him an attractive enough deal.
Attractive is something that he would like.
Attractive can also mean beautiful.
We say she's an attractive woman. we mean she's a good-looking or a beautiful woman.
But you can use the word also as an adjective to describe things that are desirable, that people would want.
Jamie doesn't know if the team Nick and Jamie work for or own can make this athlete an attractive enough deal, sufficiently attractive.
A deal means an agreement, basically a contract.
Nick says we'll offer him a signing bonus.
A bonus, B-O-N-U-S, is something additional, something extra.
Often, when you have professional athletes, especially when they are young, they're just coming out of college or sometimes high school you want them to play for your team.
So you'll pay them a regular salary, but you'll also give them a bunch of money as a bonus.
So sometimes good professional athletes in baseball, for example, can get maybe a million or two million dollars if they're really good as a signing bonus.
You sign the contract and they immediately give you a million dollars.
That's how they got me to work here at ESL podcast.
I got a huge signing bonus.
I think it was ten dollars, something like that.
Anyway, Nick says that they're going to offer a signing deal to this athlete.
Nick says that should sweeten the deal.
To sweeten the deal means to make an offer more attractive.
We offer you a million dollars and a brand new car.
The car sweetens the deal.
It makes it even more desirable if you want a car.
I guess it depends on the car, too.
Jamie says, I'm afraid that may not be enough.
She doesn't think that will be sufficiently attractive.
Don't forget that he was a first-round pick in the draft.
A draft D-R-A-F-T.
When we talk about sports, is a system that many professional sport organizations use to select new players high school or college graduates, young players who have not played for anyone else yet.
This is their first time as a professional player.
There's a system called the draft.
Basically, what happens is you have all these different teams maybe 25 30, 40 teams throughout the whole country.
They may be football teams.
They may be baseball teams.
And all of the young new players have to register for this draft, if you will.
Yeah. so that not all of the best players will go to a single team.
And after everyone gets one pick, one selection, then they start again.
The first selection, the first picks, is called the first round.
And then you have second round, third round, fourth round.
So, for example, the Los Angeles Dodgers...
We'll get one first round pick.
Every team gets one first round pick, unless there's certain cases where they don't, but usually they do.
Then they get a second round pick and a third round pick and so forth.
So that's the system that's used so that the good players go to different teams.
So the teams are more competitive.
They're more or less equal in terms of their talent.
Well, the player that Nick and Jamie are interested was a first round pick in the draft, meaning he was one of the best players when he first started.
Nick says, then we'll give him a no-trade clause.
A clause, C-L-A-U-S-E, is part of a contract.
It's a paragraph or a section or perhaps even just a sentence in a contract, an official agreement.
To trade a player means to sell the player to another team.
So a no trade clause means that the team can't trade, the player can't say OK, we're going to send you to the Boston Red Sox.
You're not going to play for the Los Angeles Dodgers anymore, which is probably a good thing this year, because you know the team isn't that good this year.
Anyway, so you trade that player.
Well, the player might have a no trade clause that says no, you can't trade me because I don't want to go to Boston.
It's too cold there.
So you can say no.
Only the very best players can get a no trade clause so they can determine where they go and where they don't go.
Nick says, with a no trade clause, this athlete will be calling the shots and won't have to worry about being traded to a team he doesn't want to be on.
The expression to call the shots means to have the power to say what will happen.
You're the person who's making the decision.
Who's calling the shots here?
Who is the person in charge?
Who is the person who's making the decisions?
Not me, I can tell you that much.
Well, Nick says that with this no trade clause, the player will be calling the shots.
They will decide where they play.
They won't have to worry about being traded to another team.
Traded means basically they sell you to another team or they give you to another team and then they get another player back for you and that happens all the time in professional sports in the united states.
Nick says the player should be happy with that.
Jamie says, I don't know.
His agent expects a lot of competing offers.
The agent is the representative, the person who takes care of the contracts, often a lawyer.
Every professional athlete has an agent.
Actors and actresses also have agents.
They are not smart enough to do things themselves.
No, I'm just kidding.
They're smart enough, some of them, but they're very busy.
And, of course, you want to have someone who's an expert in law in contracts to be taking care of your legal business.
And it is, after all, a contract for working.
So athletes have agents, and the agents may get different offers from different teams.
We might call those competing offers because more than one team is competing for that player.
They both want to get that player.
Jamie says we'll have to pull out all the stops.
If we want to land him.
The expression to pull out all the stops or pull out all of the stops means to do everything possible, to do everything you possibly can.
The expression actually comes from music, from playing an organ where, if you want the organ to play louder, you would pull out all of the stops.
We won't talk about organs right now, but the expression means to do everything possible.
Jamie says they're going to have to pull out all the stops if we want to land him.
To land, as a verb, here means to get something that is very valuable and very difficult to get.
Land, however, has a lot of different meanings.
Take a look at the learning guide for some of those.
Nick says, then we'll do it.
We won't be bested by any other team.
To be bested, B-E-S-T-E-D, by someone means to be defeated by or to be beaten by someone else.
Jamie says, like last year.
Nick says, last year, don't remind me of last year.
We can guess that something bad happened last year.
They didn't get the player that they wanted.
They were bested or beaten by another team.
Well, Nick says this year that's not going to happen.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
I don't care what it takes.
I want Robinson on my team next year.
He'll be a free agent and he'll be fielding a lot of offers.
I don't know if we can make him an attractive enough deal.
We'll offer him a signing bonus that should sweeten the deal.
I'm afraid that may not be enough.
Don't forget that he was a first round pick in the draft.
Then we'll give him a no-trade clause.
With that, he'll be calling the shots and won't have to worry about being traded to a team he doesn't want to be on.
He should be happy with that.
I don't know.
His agent expects a lot of competing offers.
We'll have to pull out all the stops if we want to land him.
Then we'll do it.
We won't be bested by any other team.
Like last year?
Last year?
Don't remind me of last year.
Our scripts will never be bested by any other podcast.
That's because they're written by the number one pick for podcast scriptwriters, Dr. Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again here on ESL Podcast.
Copyright 2012 by the Center for Educational Development.
