By Andrew Baggarly Dec 11, 2017
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – If you’ve never been to baseball’s winter meetings, allow me to set the scene.

There is a large hotel lobby. It has a humongous, plastic Christmas tree in the center. The closest coffee stand is a 15-minute walk away down a labyrinth of hallways, adjoining atriums or likely both, and it costs $7 a cup, and it tastes thin.

In every alcove and next to every potted palm you’ll find a person, probably male, probably white, probably somewhere near to middle-aged, milling about while hunched over and frowning at a glowing phone screen. Others are forming clumps and engaging in various forms of conversation, most of it banal. Their gazes constantly flicker over the tops of heads and from side to side.

At the winter meetings, no matter who you’re talking to, you are always looking for someone more important.

There are reporters and agents and wannabe agents and scouts and scouting directors and administrators and Tommy Lasorda and team travel coordinators and Jack McKeon and even an out-of-work former player or two. One year, I saw Vinnie Chulk. Another, Gookie Dawkins.

Gookie wandered past me on a Thursday afternoon in Dallas, just after the Rule 5 draft and after half the team officials already had ducked into black cars bound for the airport. He asked me for directions. I reluctantly told him that most everyone had left.

“Man,” he said.

I felt bad for Gookie.

The college kids know to show up earlier. They are easy to spot with their boxy suits and bulky folders and loads of ambition. When I was younger and didn’t have much time for empathy, I used to find them mildly pathetic. Now I hate that I felt that way.

How much courage does it take to drive maybe 11 hours, armed with only your enthusiasm and a hug from mom, hoping to make enough of an impression on someone that you’ll get to drag the infield and sell tickets and eat cold pizza while making less than a living wage in someplace like Lethbridge or Yakima? When you crave nothing but the chance to occupy the lowest rung, with the determination to work your way up from there, who cares if your jacket sleeves are an inch too long?

Baseball fans like you, of course, follow the winter meetings for the trades and free-agent signings — a sprinkling of which actually occur every now and then. So you might not realize that the annual convention involves much more than what gets distilled on MLBtraderumors.com or in updates from the regional cable networks decamped in their duct-taped village of set pieces.

Baseball is like any other industry that holds an annual confab. There are trade shows and equipment demos and performance scientists and data crunchers. Manufacturers bring samples of their latest cheap giveaway ideas, hoping to score the next bobblehead trend. (The gnome guy killed it a few years ago.) Hotel chains send representatives to try to woo away clubs from the Ritz or the Four Seasons or wherever they stayed in Atlanta last year. (If their hotel isn’t within walking distance of a Cheesecake Factory, good luck.)

The umpires hold summits to go over policies and procedures. The public relations officials get together. The trainers and medical staffs get together. The managers and general managers get together to go over potential rule changes. There is a Wednesday media luncheon with the managers (Chicken! Probably chicken! And raspberry cheesecake!), where the round tables with Rays or Pirates logos get filled out by baseball’s version of rando guests at weddings. Not to be forgotten, members of the Baseball Writers Association of America hold their annual meeting, as well, which I would love to tell you is as crackling and witty as an afternoon at the Algonquin.

But the real action, the stuff you actually care about, happens in the suites of the 30 major league general managers. This is where they set up their easels and plug in their power strips and fan out their laptops. This is where they hold scheduled meetings with agents, as well as counterparts from other teams. (The Beverly Hills Sports Council can be recognized by their Flying V formation as they glide across public spaces in search of the correct bank of elevators.)

Most GMs also invite their beat reporters to the suite once a day so they can take questions and practice the art of evasion.

I’ve been in my share of suites and they are not created equal. One year, when Ned Colletti was still the Giants assistant GM, he welcomed us to their war room, lined with scotch bottles and beer and chafing dishes and what I presume was the entire snack-food aisle purchased from the Publix six miles away, and proclaimed that there was a one-drink minimum before anyone could ask a question. He was probably joking. It was a free drink. So we chose to assume that he wasn’t.

It so happened that I had to pull double-duty and cover the A’s that year. Billy Beane’s suite was next. There was a table, a couch, two cases of bottled water stacked on the floor and a bag of pretzel twists. Billy had a prerequisite to ask a question, too, but his was a bit different. First, you had to tell him what Sabes was up to.

It’s hard for a beat writer to break major news at the winter meetings. So much of it gets funneled to the national guys, who earn every bit of what they get because they are utterly tireless and work year round to build and maintain sources across the league.

I’ve gotten a scrap of news here and there, though. I was first to report the Angel Pagan trade at the 2011 meetings (with Ramon Ramirez and Andres Torres going to the Mets) — a scoop I got merely by connecting a few dots. Another reporter, Joel Sherman if memory serves, had reported earlier in the day that the Mets were close to making a trade for an outfielder and a relief pitcher. I knew the Giants were targeting arbitration-eligible outfielders, and Pagan fit the description of the player they wanted.

After we finished our session in the suite with Brian Sabean, I was able to get a private moment and pretended to know more than I did. I asked him to confirm that Ramirez and Torres were the right names going to the Mets for Pagan. He looked surprised, nodded, and said, “pretty close,” because, I presume, “bless my whiskers, right on the nose!” isn’t something he makes a habit of exclaiming.

Another time, during one especially slow winter meetings, I got the only scooplet of the first day when I asked a Giants scout about the chances of re-signing Brad Penny.

“We tried,” came the response. “He’s going to the Cardinals.” A pause. “Haven’t they announced that yet?”

At the time, I was relatively new to Twitter. Mostly, I considered it a stupid fad. (I no longer think it’s a fad.) So in the shadow of an enormous, fake Christmas tree, almost as an afterthought, I tapped out a tweet about Penny and the Cardinals. It shocked me how quickly that tweet traveled. Five minutes later, people were congratulating me. “For a tweet? But I didn’t even write anything!” That was when it dawned on me: the days of racing back and forth between the lobby and the press room were pretty much over. The news cycle had accelerated from sub-light speed to Warp 1. We’re probably on Warp 6 or 8 now, bless my whiskers.

By far my most memorable winter meetings experience came two years ago at the Gaylord Opryland in Nashville, which is an upset in itself, because nobody ever considers it a memorable experience to walk into the Gaylord Opryland in Nashville. It is a gargantuan complex of atriums connected by confusing pathways that might as well be located underneath the palace at Knossos. I think the desiccated remains of Tony Siegle can be found somewhere between the Dixie and Delta wings. When you cover a winter meetings there, you walk through the revolving door, and four days later you’ve spent as much time “outside” as Arnold Schwarzenegger did in “Total Recall.”

I had a reservation at the Opryland, which is key. Trust me, it is much, much better to have a room on site — even if it takes you 45 minutes and a hazy recollection of your high school trigonometry to walk there from the lobby — than to be at the Marriott Courtyard three-quarters of a mile away. (Yes, this is true even though there is a Cracker Barrel located in-between.)

When I went to check in, though, there was a problem. My reservation was not for the Opryland. It was for something called the Inn at Opryland.

“It’s on the other side of the interstate,” the desk clerk said.

I was incredulous. This place was bigger than the Pentagon. And there was another one?

I pleaded: were there any rooms left? It was bad enough to get lost between atriums. The thoughts of being a pedestrian wandering in the dark down a wrong-way onramp terrified me.

Yes, the clerk said. They could put me in a parlor room.

“Done!” I said.

“Now, understand, a parlor room doesn’t have a standard bed.”

“Done!”

“It’s more of a meeting room.”

“Sounds just dandy.”

“There’s a Murphy bed that—”

“Good. Good.”

“—I hear it’s very comfortable.”

“That’ll be fine. And put me down for the platinum bonus points, please.”

Bottom line: they put me in an area where they weren’t supposed to put reporters. They basically gave me a GM suite. And it had an adjoining door.

To another GM suite.

One that was actually being used by a GM.

I soon discovered: if you can’t be a fly on the wall, the other side of an adjoining door is the next best thing. Sound bleeds through those things like they’re made of butcher paper. No doubt you appreciate this fact if you’ve ever had a hotel room next to a particularly affectionate couple or frat guys or a 2-year-old. (Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether it’s frat guys or 2-year-olds.)

I figured out what was happening the next morning when I was brushing my teeth and the muffled but distinct words came through the wall: “Rajai Davis” and “one year, one year and an option would be ideal” and “he’s in great shape” and “would love to be a Cleveland Indian” and “I’m telling you, he’s in great shape.”

They had put me hard alongside the Indians suite. And I could hear just about everything.

The Arizona Diamondbacks came for a meeting. Tony La Russa’s words were hard to make out, but Dave Stewart’s high-pitched voice pierced through that door like construction noise. Stew was trying to trade for Danny Salazar. The Indians wanted A.J. Pollock. The Diamondbacks politely declined.

Cory Luebke’s agent stopped by for a visit. His client was finishing up his Tommy John rehab and looking for a team. The two sides agreed to touch base later. Other agencies stopped by at regular intervals, mostly shopping clients who hadn’t yet dropped their sights from a guaranteed contract to a minor league deal with a spring training invite.

It was impossible not to be alerted whenever a visitor entered the room. For a full three minutes, it would be very noisy and jubilant. There would be good-natured jokes at each other’s expense, questions about how so-and-so is doing. From clear across the other side of my room, I could hear the back slapping. Then it would get quiet and the agent or the club official would get down to business.

What surprised me about these pitches is how respectful and deferential they were. Nobody made demands. Nobody set ultimatums. Nobody sought to control the power dynamic.

Everyone’s client was a good guy, a humble person, a hard worker who really, really wanted to be a Cleveland Indian. They just wanted a chance. In that respect, it occurred to me, the players’ pitches weren’t all that different from the 19-year-olds in those boxy suits.

Even the Indians’ pushback would be overly polite.

“Well, he did hit .188 and ended the year on the disabled list, but we all know what he can do when he’s right …”

Then many more rounds of noisy thank-yous and well wishes, often accompanied by a round of back slapping.

Most of these meetings would happen in the morning, and I debated the ethics of staying cooped up in my room until noon to listen. I got around that dilemma by deciding that I wasn’t being a spy. I was just seizing an opportunity to justify spending more time in my room and less time in that godforsaken lobby. Sloth was my sin, not treachery!

Besides, what was I supposed to do with Rajai Davis news? Or the Diamondbacks turning down A.J. Pollock for Danny Salazar?

Well, actually …

A certain Indians beat reporter became my best buddy for the remainder of those meetings. Whenever he saw me in the lobby, or walking between atriums, he’d freeze with a look of delight and bound toward me like I was the tail lights of an ice cream truck. I’d helpfully suggest a name or two that he might want to investigate, and I noticed that I had his full and undivided attention. No gazing over the top of my head or flickering from side to side. For him, that winter meetings, I was the most important person at the Gaylord Opryland.

I’m on a flight to Orlando as I write this, and when I touch down, my inescapable destination will be the Swan and Dolphin resorts near Walt Disney World. I hope to venture outside for five minutes. (I didn’t bring sunscreen.)

The Giants figure to be among the busiest clubs at these meetings, both on the trade and free-agent front. They have a ton of work to do if they plan on turning a 98-loss team into an instant contender next season. They’ll be aggressive and open minded on everyone, which they have to be — and that means no shortage of fiction to winnow from fact.

With Giancarlo Stanton a Yankee and Shohei Ohtani an Angel, and almost every other free agent still on the market, and superstars like Andrew McCutchen and Evan Longoria and maybe even Manny Machado and Josh Donaldson bubbling up in trade talks, and the Giants potentially in on all of it, this should be one of the least predictable winter meetings I’ve ever covered.

I hope they have a nice parlor room available.