Peter Gammons was interviewed about hot stove stuff and he was asked about what happens at the Winter Meetings:
It’s a lot of lobby wandering. You got everybody there and it’s fun. You see Alderson go into an elevator with (Cubs general manager) Jim Hendry and all of a sudden you start working to see if there is a Cubs- Mets trade being talked about. It goes on like that all day. Usually from Sunday to Monday things are out of control with rumors and stuff.
Last year was my first Winter Meetings and that was my sense of it too. Glad I wasn’t missing anything. My guess is Gammons will get to enjoy the Meetings more this year than he did last year, as this year he won’t be announcing that he’s leaving ESPN, thereby causing every writer in the place to want to come congratulate him. I have no idea how he got any work done last year. Then again, the Meetings were in a cold and snowy Indianapolis last year too, so it’s not like there were many distractions beyond that.
Anyway, I’m going to the Winter Meetings again this year. They’re at Disney World. I’m flying down on Sunday and will be reporting from them all week. For those of you who weren’t HBT readers last year, know this: we update constantly during the Meetings, even more frequently than we currently do. If there is buzz about anything, you can bet that we’ll be among the first if not the first to pass it along. So what I’m saying is that you should probably keep a window open with HBT in it all week long.
This will probably be the best Winter Meetings for a while too. I hear that for the next two years they’ll be in Russia and Qatar.
