Ballpark Travel

So the Red Sox response to the New York spending binge has finally come out in the way of two great investments. Brad Penny and Josh Bard are two players that have showed themselves as being far better than their 2008 performances and the Red Sox did a nice job in picking up this duo for cheap. While Penny has only pitched in the National League, he will benefit from working with "stuff" pitchers in Josh Beckett and Daisuke Matsuzaka. Pitching coach John Farrell has done an excellent job transforming Josh Beckett into an American League starter and I imagine that Penny will receive similar instruction. This is also going to be a rotation of 95+ MPH hurlers with Beckett, Matsuzaka, Lester and now Penny all being able to light up the gun. Interestingly enough, Josh Bard is back in Boston after being passed over for Doug Mirabelli because of his inability to catch Tim Wakefield's knuckleball. A season in which Bard hit .338, 9, 40 after the trade to San Diego. This signals t...

I have been rather quiet lately about the offseason, but with the Mark Teixeira signing today in New York, I think it is time for me to pipe up. During the month of December, the New York Yankees and Brian Cashman have agressively been pushing their free agent dollars towards signing the top talent to fill the voids from their 2008 team. I have to admit that I am now very impressed that they have Teixeira. Starting over the summer, I saw the Yankees and also the Mets being big players for the slugger and when the Mets decided to stick with Carlos Delgado after a hot second half, the Yankees were the logical destination for Teixeira. When I heard that the Yankees were not all that interested in him up until today, I have been very critical of their signings of Sabathia and Burnett as it was their offense that really needed that extra bat to push it into a playoff picture again. They get that with Teixeira. The possibility for Manny Ramirez is probably closed now as well, which also make...

Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 The final day finally arrived. With little sleep, lots of junk food and beer in my system from the social networking portion of the Winter Meetings, it was time to wrap this experience up. On this day, I had a couple more interviews with the Connecticut Defenders as well as my rescheduled second interview with the Portland Beavers. Each of which went very well. Neither position has much appeal to me, but the practice of interviewing is always important to job seekers. With the remainder of the day at the meetings, I spent my time with the friends that I had made during my time in Las Vegas. By putting so many people under the same roof with similar career desires and motivations, it was easy to make connections and friendships. I really enjoyed my time at the Winter Meetings in 2008 and the people I met and lessons I learned. Patience is going to pay off with this field and being able to make your own luck will go a long way for success. It was very appro...

Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 Just as with Monday, the fourth day of the Winter Meetings provided me with some further insight about how to get into the business of baseball. Tuesday was the big day for job candidates as the interviews were running seemingly from 9:00 AM through the cocktail hour. On this day, I had five meetings scheduled in two different hotels and during four different times meaning that I had a double booking between the Pittsburgh Pirates Video Scouting internship as well as a second interview with the Portland Beavers for their Inside Sales Representative position. In addition to those two positions, I also met with the Chicago Cubs baseball operations department, interviewed with the New Britain Rock Cats and Savannah Sand Gnats. It was an incredibly hectic day that required me to go from the Las Vegas Hilton, where the job fair and many interviews were occurring, to the Bellagio, where the major league teams were operating their sessions for the Winter Meetings a...

Monday, December 8th, 2008 Monday was a wonderful change in what seems to be a rollercoaster of a job fair. Monday marked the beginning of the interviews for positions to which I had four interviews with the following positions: Intern, Las Vegas 51’s Marketing Trainee, Atlanta Braves Inside Sales Representative, San Francisco Giants Inside Sales Representative, Portland Beavers The confusion that surrounded the day did allow for these four jobs to be possible to interview for. Based on my experience in marketing/sales, I was very pleased to see these types of results with the first day. It was really a wonderful feeling to interview with four of the jobs that I applied for the day before, with several more to come in the future days while in Las Vegas. The second day is supposed to be the big day for interviews and I will look forward to seeing how round two turns out as day one provided a ton of excitement as well as confusion. One of the most confusing parts to the first day of inte...

Sunday, December 7th, 2008 So the honeymoon is over for me today after a day of reality checks and disappointment. For nine hours today, myself and somewhere in the area of five-hundred other job seekers spent time listening to some of the greatest minds in Minor League Baseball talk about the barriers of entry to the business of baseball. What was so disappointing to me was that many of the people talking this afternoon were explaining the barriers to entry to the sport, which I suppose might have helped some people, but I am in Las Vegas because I am trying my hardest to break into a sport that is incredibly difficult to enter – I assumed the risk before I came here and there is not a whole lot that can deter me from my mission. I imagine that most of the other people here this week are also in the same position. At one point, I decided to ask one of the high ranking officials in Minor League Baseball to give the audience a sales pitch as to why we should want to work in Minor League...

Saturday, December 6th, 2008 As the sun rose to show itself through the frigid central New York air, I was perched up in the sky looking out onto a new day. It could not have been more appropriate as I finish my career at Ithaca College and am embarking on my journey to find a job at the Baseball Winter Meetings in Las Vegas, Nevada. The trip itself was quite the journey – waking up at 5:00 AM to catch my flight from Ithaca to Newark, and then picking up three hours from Newark to Las Vegas. Baseball never ceases to amaze me with its ability to bring complete strangers together. On the flight from Newark to Las Vegas, I pulled out the Baseball America 2008 handbook to take a quick look and the guy sitting next to me immediately started to talk me up about the Baseball Winter Meetings and I found a person that was in the exact situation that I am in, looking for a job. If that wasn’t enough of a coincidence, when we stood up to get off the plane, my new acquaintance recognized that the ...