Hangin' in the lobby

So what really happens at Baseball’s winter meetings? Try hanging out and talking – kind of what happens when the season starts.

The only difference is that every team from the Yankees to the lowest level minor-league affiliate turns up for the winter meetings no matter where they hold them from year to year. This year, of course, the meetings are at a Disney World resort in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, the little burg conjured up by Walt Disney for his park. Last year baseball showed up in Dallas, and before that it was Anaheim, New Orleans and Boston.

It doesn’t seem as if baseball is going back to Boston for the winter meetings any time soon. In fact, next year they head to Nashville before going to the place the ought to just permanently stage the meetings:

Vegas, baby. Vegas.

Of course they follow Vegas with Indianapolis. That hardly seems fair for the good folks in Indiana’s biggest city.

Still, the winter meetings aren’t just a place for job seekers, back slappin’ and grab assin’. In the old days it seemed as if the winter meetings were where teams were assembled. Check out the small print on the top portion of the back of an old baseball card. Next to the agate type reading, “Acquired:” the date that follows usually coincides with the winter meetings.

That’s hardly a coincidence.

Sometimes nothing happens, too. During the past six years for the Phillies, the winter meetings have been places where things get squashed. Like in 2001 when Scott Rolen was traded to Baltimore before the Orioles backed out when they decided they probably weren’t going to be able to re-sign the third baseman.

Another year a member of the Phillies media contingent was shoved off an elevator by a colleague as it stopped between floors. Because of that incident there hasn’t been a day at the ballpark where a writer hasn’t attempted to push a fellow scribe off an elevator when the doors open on the way to another floor.

What, you were expecting tweed and elbow patches with that bunch?

Nevertheless, it seems as if there is another quiet stay at a warm-weather resort for the Phillies’ contingent at the winter meetings. Of course that could all change over night when the GMs head to another luau full of drinks with umbrellas, colorful leis and a limbo contest for guys dressed in wacky summertime shirts.

That’s not so different from the old days when GMs would wake up where they fell during the early morning hours with a trade scratched out on a crumpled up cocktail napkin.