Winter Meetings Job Seeker Journal: David Lauterbach, December 7
By David Lauterbach, special to MiLB.com
Throughout this year’s Winter Meetings in Nashville, four attendees of the PBEO Job Fair have agreed to chronicle their employment-seeking experiences (meet them all HERE.). In this, his second installment, David Lauterbach expands his horizons, catches a glimpse of a legend and, inevitably, gets lost.
Well I haven’t gotten to Hideo Nomo yet, but I have made progress… I think.
Day two is in the books and I think it was much more successful than the first because well, I actually applied to some jobs and that’s the point of attending the Job Fair. So, yes, it was successful.
Bright and early at 9 a.m., I was outside the job postings room and ready to go in. Surprisingly unlike the first day, not as many people were in the room, which allowed me to walk freely in the aisles to peruse the different jobs posted. After looking them all over, I went to the work area and began to apply.
I’ve always wanted to be a broadcaster and I still want to be, but those aren’t the only jobs I applied to. To be successful in broadcasting, I’ve always been told the most important thing is to get your name in front of as many people as possible. That’s why I also applied to media relations jobs that involve no broadcasting, because most posted are for Triple-A or MLB teams. Those are the exact people I need to get my name in front of. Who knows if I will be interviewed for those jobs? Well, the people that looked over my work yesterday do, but that’s not the point. The point is that when you come to this Job Fair, it’s important to not pigeonhole yourself. The ultimate goal for everyone here is to make the big leagues. As a result, you have to be willing to work any odd job you might have to in order to get that call one day down the road.
After a couple hours in the job postings area, I spoke with a couple people I knew who already have jobs and heeded their advice to get out of the Job Fair. As a result, I went with a couple friends on a long tour of the hotel. Okay, maybe it wasn’t a long tour. We were trying to find a couple places where people were congregating and we got lost. Ben, my “getting lost” count is now at four. I think your “bet the over” for seven is looking very likely.
We walked around the hotel, watched a couple minutes of MLB Network’s coverage, caught up with some old friends, met some new friends and even saw, for one brief second, Don Mattingly. When we saw Donnie Baseball walk by I realized how big this place really is and how true this tweet from Jayson Stark was. This place is so massive, the government really could place the Witness Protection Program here. I have seen only one big league executive walk through (being on MLB Network doesn’t count in my opinion) and now one manager. I expect to not see another over the final two days I’m here.
Going back to meeting up with old friends and getting to know new ones, that’s the best part of the Winter Meetings. As a broadcaster, I follow a lot of other broadcasters on Twitter, so it’s kind of funny to run in to people who I feel like I’ve known for a year or more and talk to them for the first time. But what’s even better is that because everyone here is in baseball; it’s not awkward. All you have to do is sit down and talk about the hot stove, your last season, their last season, what each of you is looking for, and whether a hot dog is a sandwich. By the way, a hot dog is in fact not a sandwich.
From there, I put my feet up in my room for a little bit before heading to dinner. There’s a restaurant here called Fuse and it’s a sports bar, so naturally when a baseball event is at the hotel, everyone congregates there. It was a nice relaxing way to wrap up the second day and helped get my mind off interviews that were possibly forthcoming, despite the fact that I was spending time with other job speakers and employers.
Day Two was successful. I can see Hideo Nomo, I think and hope, in the distance. But who knows, the National Anthem is in a couple minutes (or days) and when it starts, autographs wrap up. Let’s just hope I get there before it starts.
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Tune in tomorrow, as David continues his quest for the metaphorical Hideo Nomo.
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