Day Four: Wednesday, December 10

I carry a notebook with me throughout the Winter Meetings, so that I may document that which I see and observe. Also, because it makes me feel legitimate. I mean, why would I be carrying a notebook around with me if I wasn’t a big-time writer? People who see me, even if they don’t know who I am, they still know I’m the real deal once they see that I’m a guy with a notebook. Clearly, important words are being written therein.

Or not.

All that I have written in my notebook regarding the Winter Meeting events of Wednesday, Dec. 10, is “Writing, Lynn U., Job Fair, lunch, writing, Trade Show.” Fortunately, these events are still fresh in my mind, their myriad sharp edges and curved, sloping ambiguities as yet unravaged by the inexorable passage of time. So, please, allow me to elaborate. For the purposes of this narrative, it is now Wednesday morning in San Diego.

After an a.m. writing session, I headed down the bayfront boardwalk toward the San Diego Convention Center, walking at a leisurely enough pace while San Diego’s legions of workout warriors (rollerbladers, bikers, jogging moms pushing strollers) blazed on past. My biggest workout came courtesy of this staircase, which led from the boardwalk to the second floor of the Convention Center. I felt woozy going up this thing, trying to walk in a straight line up the stairs but inevitably drifting toward the railing. Did MC Escher design this?

After a few minutes of dazed and confused San Diego Convention Center wandering, I ran into a guy named Brandon Caudill. Rather than register for the PBEO Job Fair, he opted for a DIY employment-seeking technique.

A message from Brandon, with the incessant clanging of train warning bells in the background.

Brandon Caudill needs a job. He once dressed up as a dragon. https://t.co/JUithTiWrT

— Benjamin Hill (@bensbiz) December 10, 2014

Brandon didn’t seem to be in the best of spirits, perhaps as a result of having spent three days wandering around San Diego while wearing a homemade sandwich board. I admired his moxie, however, and hope that he will once again be able to dress up as a dragon.

Bidding adieu and good luck, I then hustled into the Trade Show in order to partake in what has become a Winter Meetings tradition for me: speaking to Lynn University sports management students. Each year, professor Ted Curtis procures a booth at the Trade Show, inviting various industry luminaries (operating at various degrees of wattage) to stop by and give a little insight into his or her profession.

Given the travel involved from Boca Raton to San Diego, there were fewer Lynn University students present than in previous years. Hear I am speaking to one of them.

From there it was back to the Job Fair, to speak with Maggie O’Keeffe. I first met Maggie, 20, at the Promo Seminar in Oklahoma City this past September and became intrigued by her quest to become the first female play-by-play announcer in Major League Baseball history. (Or at least one of the first.) My MiLB.com feature on Maggie can be read HERE.

While prowling the Job Fair area, I ran into Job Seeker Journal writer Darius Thigpen, who was participating in a podcast taping with fellow job seeker Ben Gellman-Chomsky.

I ended up inviting myself on as a guest to the podcast, and then got kicked off after delivering one too many puns. (For many people, “one too many puns” = one.) This was Gellman-Chomsky’s fifth time attending the Job Fair and — spoiler alert — he got a job.

Happy to announce I’m joining the New Hampshire @FisherCats in sales, media relations and broadcasting! So honored to join @TomGauthier21

— Ben Gellman-Chomsky (@benjgc) December 12, 2014

People don’t get hired based on the strength of their business cards alone, but this certainly couldn’t have hurt. 1986 Topps for life!

Upon bidding adieu to the Trade Show, lunch was consumed while sitting in Petco Park’s open-to-the-public bleacher seating area. Fake snow-making was in progress.

Afterwards, I took a few minutes to appreciate the accomplishments of Padres icon Jerry Coleman.

It was then back to the Convention Center for one last run through the Trade Show.

I had a small list of vendors who I wanted to interview for future MiLB.com stories or blog posts, but my efforts in this regard were largely fruitless. The show was now in its final hour, and a “Let’s blow this joint” attitude prevailed. Many of the vendors had already packed up and left, and many others were in the process of doing so. I understand how exhausting it is to be a Trade Show vendor, on your feet all day while hustling product with a permanent smile, but why not stick it out until the bitter end? You never know who might come along.

This representative of the XPogo stunt team stuck it out until the end, and I am now rewarding him for his perseverance via the posting of this Vine video. (Hey, it’s better than nothing). Coming soon to a ballpark near you?

XPogo Stunt Team at the Winter meetings Trade Show! https://t.co/qgVpSUm2bs

— Benjamin Hill (@bensbiz) December 11, 2014

Closing time, the Trade Show sells no alcohol, so sneak in your whisky and beer… (If you’ve got better Trade Show-related parody lyrics, then, by all means, please get in touch.)

The mannequins had been stripped of their clothing and the floor had been stripped of its carpet. Clearly it was time to leave. After a brief constitutional in the hotel room, it was time to head back to Petco Park for the annual Winter Meetings Gala. This is the eighth such event I’ve been to, and the most memorable. Industry in a Holiday Wonderland.

The Winter Meetings Gala at Petco Park, happening now… https://t.co/peaiODaYf1

— Benjamin Hill (@bensbiz) December 11, 2014

I’ve always enjoyed the Gala, no matter the locale, because it signifies the end of the Winter Meetings. I am fortunate to be able to attend this event, but is inherently stressful — a lot of frantic speedwalking from one locale to another, a lot of impromptu conversations with people who I may not see for another year (or whom I’m meeting for the first time) and a lot of harried writing sessions in lobbies, hallways and hotel rooms. No matter what I’m doing, I always feel like I’m missing out on something else. It’s just overwhelming.

So when the Gala rolls around, it is accompanied by a profound feeling of relief. The Winter Meetings are done, save for one last chance for me to walk around and wait for people who work in Minor League Baseball to accost me with compliments regarding the work I do. I need this ego fuel, keeping it in reserve for a long, cold months ahead.

A good photographer, or at least someone who didn’t have a phone in one hand and a drink in the other, could have gotten some great shots from this event. There were elves and Santa and the Grinch and fairies wearing ice skates on the premises. A sledding hill was installed on the outfield, tours of the clubhouse were available and fireworks went off promptly at nine o’clock.

A walking snow globe.

The evening kept right on rolling after the Gala concluded, with many attendees heading across the street to a party co-sponsored by Brandiose (whose founders are San Diego natives) and the Lake Elsinore Storm (a Padres affiliate located just 75 miles away). This Vine sums up the atmosphere, and it also includes a cameo by elusive Minoring in Twitter scribe Danny Wild.

Industry https://t.co/koCa7E7ewI

— Benjamin Hill (@bensbiz) December 11, 2014

It was a long night that resulted in virtually no sleep, as early the next morning I was at the airport in order to fly on back to New York City. I slept the whole way, but not before overhearing the following while waiting to board.

Overheard at San Diego airport: “So what do I do to make this the best cactus it can be? Nothing?” – man holding a small potted cactus.

— Benjamin Hill (@bensbiz) December 11, 2014

And that’s all I’ve got, the well has run dry. Not only are the Winter Meetings in the books, but my Winter Meetings-related blogging efforts are in the books as well. I hope you found these posts to be illuminating and edifying.

benjamin.hill@mlb.com

twitter.com/bensbiz

Day Three: Tuesday, December 9

On Tuesday, with the Winter Meetings in full swing, an anonymous but clearly exasperated Minor League Baseball employee posted the following to the @MiLBProbz Twitter account:

Everyone who’s not in San Diego and is stuck at the office looking at hotel views, sunsets, and other fun pics. @WinterMeetings#MiLBprobz

— MiLB Probz (@MiLBprobz) December 9, 2014

I can understand the frustration. Only a privileged handful of each team’s employees get to attend the Winter Meetings each year, while the rest are stuck in the office making cold calls (you know, because it’s winter). But, hey, guess what? If those same frustrated front officers ever get the chance to attend the Winter Meetings themselves, then you can bet dollars to donuts that they, too, will engage in disingenuous “wish you were here” social media braggadocio. It’s human nature: Complain about abhorrent behavior until you, too, have a chance to engage in it!

I’m as guilty as the rest. More so, actually, as this series of blog posts has allowed me to extend my Winter Meeting reminisces until more than a week after the event’s conclusion. This is because everything that happened to me while in San Diego was VERY IMPORTANT. Like, on Tuesday morning, while walking to the San Diego Convention Center, I took a picture of this boatload of bananas.

I could produce a lot of these types of pictures, if I so desired. They have mass a-peel, so why not just keep on Dole-ing them out? After all, I’m not the sort of man willing to let a prime punning opportunity potassium right by. Seeking to share the fruits of my labors, I introduced the following concept to my vast Twitter following:

Introducing the #WinterMeetingsPuns hashtag. Unburden yourself of the shame associated with the genre and send me your Winter Meetings puns!

— Benjamin Hill (@bensbiz) December 9, 2014

Spoiler alert: this went nowhere. The next day, I conceded defeat:

Like a six-second looping video of a fatal encounter, my attempt to popularize the #WinterMeetingsPuns hashtag died on the Vine.

— Benjamin Hill (@bensbiz) December 10, 2014

But that’s okay. In real life, I had places to go and people to see. Namely, the PBEO Job Fair, which I visited early Tuesday afternoon simply because I wanted to get a sense of what that environment was like. This event, a Winter Meetings staple, was situated on the second floor of the San Diego Convention Center. Specifically, it was located at the terminus of an interstellar portal.

The picture below depicts the scene in the Interview Schedule room. Each piece of paper posted on the boards shows the list of candidates that have been chosen to interview for a particular job or internship.

Job Seekers are generally engaged in one of three tasks: applying for a job, interviewing for a job or, most commonly, waiting around for jobs to be posted and interviews to be announced. But no matter what task one was engaged in, there was plenty of room in which to spread out.

Imagine, if you will, that the hallway seen above was littered with trap doors. Anyone with the misfortune of falling through such a door would have landed in or in front of the annual Baseball Winter Meetings Trade Show.

I went down to the Trade Show to meet a co-worker, esteemed Minoring in Twitter writer Danny Wild, so that the two of us could collaborate on a short Trade Show video for MiLB.com. In advance of Mr. Wild’s arrival, I took some time to acquaint myself with that which was contained within the Trade Show’s labyrinthian corridors.

There were a lot of things contained within, that’s the nature of the beast, but what fascinated me the most was this.

How to Master Baseball, self-published, was given to me by its author, Winston B. Lewy, who had obtained a booth at the Trade Show in order to convince attendees that he had indeed invented a way in which baseball could be mastered. The book contains 945 (!) queries related to the game of baseball, divided into chapters such as “How to Master Hitting” and “How to Master Sliding.” Adherents to the program then must construct a variety of PVC-pipe based mechanisms (as seen in the cover illustrations above) in order to practice the techniques outlined therein.

Free stuff is in abundance at the Trade Show, so when Lewy first handed me the book I didn’t think much of it. It was only after flipping through it in my room that evening that I realized I had stumbled upon something truly unique and strange. The book is written as if its target audience is a future civilization that has lost its knowledge of baseball, a civilization which must now use the book in order to understand and master the sport anew. I quickly became fascinated by Lewy and his quixotic mission, but when I returned to the Trade Show the next day to get more detail he was already gone. Had he ever been there?

Anyhow, after my brief but impactful encounter with Lewy, I did indeed meet up with my esteemed colleague Danny Wild and we did indeed produce a video (and accompanying article) about the Trade Show.

If you watched the above video, then you will see that I, for one, have already mastered baseball. My stroke (as seen at the :32 mark) is impeccable.

benjamin.hill@mlb.com

twitter.com/bensbiz

During last week’s Baseball Winter Meetings in San Diego, I dedicated my blog content to sharing the perspectives of four PBEO Job Fair attendees. I, for one, think that this job-seeking quartet did a spectacular job with their assignment. They were all great writers, up to the task of documenting a challenging life experience with honesty and humor, and since the Meetings have concluded I have been feeling quite proud of them in a cool uncle sort of way. (I am cool, right?) These feelings have unsettled me a bit, because they force me to acknowledge just how much older than them I really am. I mean, when this year’s crop of Job Seeker Journal writers was born, I was spending my days obsessing over season four of The Simpsons, Helmet’s Meantime lp and the Daulton-Kruk-Dykstra-era of the Philadelphia Phillies.

But now that the Job Seekers have had their say (at least for now), it is time to transition to sharing my own San Diego Winter Meetings experience. It was an exhausting four days, to be sure, but it was a privilege to attend and I hope this series of blog posts helps illuminate the lesser-known aspects of this annual baseball industry confab.

Day One: Sunday, December 7

I arrived in San Diego a little after 12 p.m., after a mercifully uneventful flight. It felt a bit surreal to know that the day was still young, considering that I had just traveled across the country, but such are the vagaries of westward air travel. The above picture shows the facade of San Diego’s Hyatt Hotel, one of two host sites for the 2014 Meetings. The Major League folks were based in the Hyatt, while the Minor League contingent was centered approximately half a mile away in the Bayfront Hilton.

In between (but much closer to the Hilton) was the San Diego Convention Center, home of the PBEO Job Fair as well as the annual Trade Show.

On the other side of the tracks — literally — was the heart of San Diego’s tourist-friendly Gaslamp District.

Despite having spent four days in San Diego, I never did find out why the Gaslamp Quarter is called the Gaslamp Quarter. So let’s learn together, courtesy of the generally reliable informational juggernaut that is Wikipedia:

The name “Gaslamp Quarter” is a reference to the gas lamps that were common in San Diego in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Four new gaslamps have been installed at the intersection of Market Street and 5th Avenue to evoke that time.

So there you go: The Gaslamp Quarter is called the Gaslamp Quarter because gaslamps used to be prevalent in that area of the city. Who could’ve guessed?

My Sunday afternoon wanderings were primarily motivated by a desire to get the lay of the land. One drawback of San Diego as a Winter Meetings host is that the myriad events were spread between three locations, meaning that one needed to know exactly how long it would take to get from place to place to place. This also resulted in a general dissipation of the energy that permeates the Winter Meetings, as a result of attendees being dispersed along such a wide swath of space. The reality is that the Winter Meetings have become such a huge event that there are very few locations that can accommodate it in its entirety. (Nashville’s Gaylord Opryland Hotel, a frequent Winter Meetings host, is probably the most well-equipped in this regard.)

But being forced to walk up and down Harbor Drive (or the bayfront boardwalk that runs parallel to it) is hardly something to complain about. It’s a most picturesque environment, something I really began to appreciate as the sun went down on Sunday evening.

As day transformed into night, I changed into khakis and a blazer (the most formal attire I could muster) and headed to the Hilton so that I could attend the annual Winter Meetings Banquet. Traditionally this event had been held on Thursday, the last night of the Winter Meetings, after the vast majority of attendees (including me) had cleared out of town. Moving it to Sunday seemed like a smart move on the part of the organizers, especially since this year’s iteration featured San Diego broadcasting icon Dick Enberg as emcee and Bud Selig as a special guest. A-listers!

Here’s a view from the cheap seats, as Enberg chatted up the outgoing commish on a variety of topics. Both men were fans of Minor League Baseball during a very different era. Selig spoke about rooting for the Milwaukee Brewers during the team’s days in the American Association, while Enberg was partial to the Hollywood Stars of the Pacific Coast League.

A recurring feature of the Winter Meetings Banquet is the (literal) crowning of that year’s “King of Baseball.” This monarchical title is bestowed upon a veteran executive in recognition of a lifetime spent in the game. 2014’s King of Baseball is one Bill Valentine, whose career in the sport began in 1951 when, at the age of 18, he became the youngest umpire in professional baseball history. Later, he spent more than three decades as the general manager of the Arkansas Travelers.

Here, King Bill poses with Minor League Baseball president Pat O’Conner. Valentine then took the podium in order to deliver a speech peppered with vintage jokes of the “Take my wife…please” variety. (He did not talk about the time that a Texas League umpire went through 84 baseballs during the course of two ballgames, but, fortunately, his profanity-tinged rant on that incident has been preserved for posterity.)

Oh, and for the record: I interviewed Bill Valentine the next day. The results of that rollicking conversation can be read HERE, and there’s plenty more where that came from.

After the Banquet, while standing in front of the Hilton, I happened upon the official Brandiose Winter Meetings party bus. Brandiose, as you may know, is the company responsible for many recent Minor League re-branding efforts. (Including recent efforts such as the Pawtucket Red Sox and Biloxi Shuckers.)

As they have during the past several years, Brandiose commissioned this vehicle to pick up their once (and perhaps future) Minor League clients from the airport and deliver them to the host hotel. This year held a special significance as Jason Klein and Casey White, the childhood friends who founded the company, are San Diego natives. So, while standing in front of this roving Brandiose billboard, I asked Klein to tell me a few things about the city that the average person might not know. His response: 

— The Navy trains dolphins to hunt for mines in the San Diego Bay.

— The Dole company ships massive amounts of bananas to the United States via the San Diego Port. Oklahoma City Dodgers broadcaster Alex Freedman tweeted about this the following day:

The scene outside the hotel at #WinterMeetings is absolutely bananas. (I’ll be here all week.) pic.twitter.com/E4A8Jxyx7W

— Alex Freedman (@azfreedman) December 9, 2014

— San Diego is the craft beer capital of America.

— John Spreckels, at one time the wealthiest man in San Diego, played a huge role in the city’s early 20th century rise to prominence. Spreckels was aware that corner real estate commanded more money, and thus lobbied to create short city blocks that would result in, yes, more corner real estate.

And that’ll do it as regards Day One of the Winter Meetings in San Diego. And, yes, there will be plenty more where this came from….

benjamin.hill@mlb.com

twitter.com/bensbiz