cubfan33
12-19-2002, 12:21 AM
The Winter Meetings only happen once each year. This is good - my
liver couldn't take any more. Every story I have starts "We were
standing in a bar ..." While I was there, an exceeding amount of
nothing happened, but roughly twenty minutes after I hit the road back
to Indy, pow, the fun began. All GM's on the list should know I don't
hold a grudge and I'll be happy to let you make some trades next year
while I'm there.
I'll start with the gratuitous "Damn, this hotel is big" riff. Every
story on Friday - there was no other news - seemed to talk about how
the media workroom was roughly four miles from the central gathering
area (oddly enough, it was a bar.) The Opryland was a casino without
craps tables, built on a scale not quite human, confusing to get
through and designed to elicit a reaction yet not distract. If
Tennessee ever has riverboat gambling, they have room to just float
one through there. Nice place, but a bad place for a convention of
this type.
One of the first things I did was meet Peter Gammons. Yes, this was as
cool as it sounds. I felt almost bad introducing myself, because Peter
can't take ten steps without someone stopping him to gladhand or
worse, the job seekers want his advice. However, I never saw him be
anything less than gracious and just getting five minutes to talk
baseball with him is roughly equivalent to my chat with Kerry Wood
earlier this year - something I never thought I would do and cooler
than I even imagined. I also met Jayson Stark, Tim Kirkjian, Harold
Reynolds, and a couple other national media types. All very good guys.
I learned a couple things by watching them work. First, they work and
work hard. Stark had the A's four-way for Durazo almost dead on in his
Friday column and none of us had any idea until it happened. As much
flack as they take, these guys are GOOD. They work long, long hours
and have an amazingly low signal to noise ratio. It was interesting
that at some point on Friday, Peter Gammons became human and in
conversation, he became "Peter." How cool is that?
I was lucky enough to meet up with some of the best minds in baseball.
I kept buying beer, hoping to keep them from noticing that I'm not a
stathead. Joe Sheehan of the As-Yet-Untitled Newsletter and Baseball
Prospectus was a big inspiration for UTK and he was as great in person
as in prose. Joe Dimino of Baseball Primer was someone who I wasn't
familiar with, but really impressed me with his takes on baseball. I
won't hold the Tom Henke thing against him and whatever team hires him
will be getting one of the better available minds in the game. Dayn
Perry, formerly of Bootleg Sports and now with the Padres was insanely
cool and impressed the heck out of everyone that spoke with him. I met
a guy who I think may be the hitting equivalent of Mike Marshall ...
more on him in an interview and I'm not giving his name yet so someone
doesn't scoop me! GM's, if you got a video from this guy, watch it.
He's REALLY on to something and may give me an answer to finally
shutting up the steroid talk. Keith Law is Keith Law and will probably
be the next guy that the media bitches about as being too young to be
the GM for a team. The team that steals him away from the Blue Jays
will be the next great team. I'm reasonably convinced after talking to people
from a lot of teams that there are only a small few teams that qualify
as "smart." When I first made the smart team/dumb team distinction, I
thought the breakdown was 50/50 or close. Boy, was I off. There's the
A's, the Blue Jays, the Padres, and maybe the Cubs up at the top of
the list, with several other teams slightly below the valedictorian
level. The problem is that ten to fifteen teams are simply at such a
disadvantage to the others that they always seem to come out a step
behind. It's probably not that they're stupid - definitely not - but
that they lack vision, a plan, resources, or some combination of all
those. The changes that began with Branch Rickey and Bill James are
slowly, slowly moving through baseball. As Billy Beane becomes the
Bill Walsh of baseball, sending out his disciples into all corners of
the game, the game will only get better.
I met a LOT of smart people, people that love the game, people that
were nice enough to speak to me when they could have just blown me
off, and even a few that stunned me by saying "Oh, I read UTK all the
time." I came away from Nashville with more faith in baseball. It has
problems, but it's healing itself from within. Now, it's up to the
fans to get your team to realize that they need a Keith Law, a Dayn
Perry, a Paul DePodesta, a Grady Fuson running their organization. I'm
even realizing that there may even be a place for a revolution in
medical management and scouting.
If you get the chance, you should get to the winter meetings at least
once. For me, it was amazing and I think will lead UTK to new and
interesting directions. I hope you'll stick around for it.
Yes, this wasn't injury news or even trade news and not enough to be a
feature, but I hope you don't mind. I'm still running on adrenaline
from meeting my idols and realizing that the game is breeding new
minds. You'll hear more from me on this as well.
I'll be picking up the pace of UTK soon, for those asking for more.
Until then, you have my email address.
liver couldn't take any more. Every story I have starts "We were
standing in a bar ..." While I was there, an exceeding amount of
nothing happened, but roughly twenty minutes after I hit the road back
to Indy, pow, the fun began. All GM's on the list should know I don't
hold a grudge and I'll be happy to let you make some trades next year
while I'm there.
I'll start with the gratuitous "Damn, this hotel is big" riff. Every
story on Friday - there was no other news - seemed to talk about how
the media workroom was roughly four miles from the central gathering
area (oddly enough, it was a bar.) The Opryland was a casino without
craps tables, built on a scale not quite human, confusing to get
through and designed to elicit a reaction yet not distract. If
Tennessee ever has riverboat gambling, they have room to just float
one through there. Nice place, but a bad place for a convention of
this type.
One of the first things I did was meet Peter Gammons. Yes, this was as
cool as it sounds. I felt almost bad introducing myself, because Peter
can't take ten steps without someone stopping him to gladhand or
worse, the job seekers want his advice. However, I never saw him be
anything less than gracious and just getting five minutes to talk
baseball with him is roughly equivalent to my chat with Kerry Wood
earlier this year - something I never thought I would do and cooler
than I even imagined. I also met Jayson Stark, Tim Kirkjian, Harold
Reynolds, and a couple other national media types. All very good guys.
I learned a couple things by watching them work. First, they work and
work hard. Stark had the A's four-way for Durazo almost dead on in his
Friday column and none of us had any idea until it happened. As much
flack as they take, these guys are GOOD. They work long, long hours
and have an amazingly low signal to noise ratio. It was interesting
that at some point on Friday, Peter Gammons became human and in
conversation, he became "Peter." How cool is that?
I was lucky enough to meet up with some of the best minds in baseball.
I kept buying beer, hoping to keep them from noticing that I'm not a
stathead. Joe Sheehan of the As-Yet-Untitled Newsletter and Baseball
Prospectus was a big inspiration for UTK and he was as great in person
as in prose. Joe Dimino of Baseball Primer was someone who I wasn't
familiar with, but really impressed me with his takes on baseball. I
won't hold the Tom Henke thing against him and whatever team hires him
will be getting one of the better available minds in the game. Dayn
Perry, formerly of Bootleg Sports and now with the Padres was insanely
cool and impressed the heck out of everyone that spoke with him. I met
a guy who I think may be the hitting equivalent of Mike Marshall ...
more on him in an interview and I'm not giving his name yet so someone
doesn't scoop me! GM's, if you got a video from this guy, watch it.
He's REALLY on to something and may give me an answer to finally
shutting up the steroid talk. Keith Law is Keith Law and will probably
be the next guy that the media bitches about as being too young to be
the GM for a team. The team that steals him away from the Blue Jays
will be the next great team. I'm reasonably convinced after talking to people
from a lot of teams that there are only a small few teams that qualify
as "smart." When I first made the smart team/dumb team distinction, I
thought the breakdown was 50/50 or close. Boy, was I off. There's the
A's, the Blue Jays, the Padres, and maybe the Cubs up at the top of
the list, with several other teams slightly below the valedictorian
level. The problem is that ten to fifteen teams are simply at such a
disadvantage to the others that they always seem to come out a step
behind. It's probably not that they're stupid - definitely not - but
that they lack vision, a plan, resources, or some combination of all
those. The changes that began with Branch Rickey and Bill James are
slowly, slowly moving through baseball. As Billy Beane becomes the
Bill Walsh of baseball, sending out his disciples into all corners of
the game, the game will only get better.
I met a LOT of smart people, people that love the game, people that
were nice enough to speak to me when they could have just blown me
off, and even a few that stunned me by saying "Oh, I read UTK all the
time." I came away from Nashville with more faith in baseball. It has
problems, but it's healing itself from within. Now, it's up to the
fans to get your team to realize that they need a Keith Law, a Dayn
Perry, a Paul DePodesta, a Grady Fuson running their organization. I'm
even realizing that there may even be a place for a revolution in
medical management and scouting.
If you get the chance, you should get to the winter meetings at least
once. For me, it was amazing and I think will lead UTK to new and
interesting directions. I hope you'll stick around for it.
Yes, this wasn't injury news or even trade news and not enough to be a
feature, but I hope you don't mind. I'm still running on adrenaline
from meeting my idols and realizing that the game is breeding new
minds. You'll hear more from me on this as well.
I'll be picking up the pace of UTK soon, for those asking for more.
Until then, you have my email address.