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The Winter Meetings: Day One

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 person sitting in front of us was a long-time Yankee writer. Yes, I was immediately convinced that coming to the Winter Meetings was the right move for me.

While looking out at the millions of flashing bulbs from my 7th floor room, I have been thinking about what other amazing things are in store with the coming days at the 2008 meetings. What I do know is that all of the hard work and the planning to get to where I am is an incredibly rewarding feeling – only to be matched by getting the job that I have been working towards over the past half-decade.

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