Covering the Winter Meetings...

I've never covered baseball, but being a fan I love reading the rumors and close-to-a-deal talk that goes on during the winter meetings.

What about baseball writers? Are the winter meetings fun to cover, or is it like gouging your eyes out with a screwdriver?

 

I'd venture to guess very few know what it feels like this year.

 

The latter.

 

It's the worst assignment of the year, edging out All-Star Game Monday.

Your workday starts when you wake up and ends when you go to sleep. I've covered winter meetings where I've not left the hotel once. You can't leave because you never know when your team might do something. And now, because of Internet idiocy, you have to blog constantly with every rumor you hear, confirmed or not.

It's worse as a West Coast writer because GMs and agents talk into the night, so if the meetings are in the East or Central time zones, you can write up till 1 or 2 a.m.

Sitting down to eat is a rare luxury, and you constantly have to walk between the press room and the lobby to make sure you don't miss someone you need to talk to.

I've covered half a dozen, but not this one. Budget cuts have limited our paper to sending one guy, our national writer. In one sense, I'm sorry I'm not there because it is one of the biggest events of the year on the beat.

On the other hand, I'm thrilled I don't have to be there. Walking out of that hotel on the final day always feels like walking out of your last final exam of college.

 

And very likely the worst possible place to cover them - the Gaylord Opryland Bio-Dome whatchamacallit in Nashville.

Fully 20 minutes to walk from said press centre to the lobby - actually, there are like five lobbies, so who knows where the hell you're supposed to go?

If you take the wrong turn past the indoor riverboat ride thingie, it might be an hour before you can find your hotel room again.

People from Appalachia and Arkansas flood the place on the weekend - they actually travel all that way JUST TO STAY IN THIS PLACE AND RIDE THE INDOOR ROWBOAT.

It is frightening.

Now, New Orleans (pre-Katrina), that was more like it - especially when the University of North Texas boosters arrived for a bowl game and marched their band about the place.

 

this year it's in vegas

 

I wonder what it would feel like if they actually had the winter meetings during winter instead of late fall?

 

great kick outta this about the present meetings:

the n.y. daily news, which hasn't received the memo about the state of our industry, has FOUR people in las vegas (madden, harper and their yanks and mets beat guys).

yet it was joel sherman of the n.y. post who broke the sabathia story at about 4 a.m. this morning and the post who was credited by espn and all n.y. radio stations this morning. and joel was duly rewarded with tv and radio appearances galore.

leon carter must be so proud....