Baseball's Winter Meetings Day 1: Gammons owns the lobby - repost

NOTE: This post was originally published on Dec. 5.

ORLANDO – Baseball’s Winter Meetings really get interesting when the day’s scheduled events conclude and everyone heads to the lobby for cocktails and conversation.

MinorLeagueDugout.com loves the odd mix. Jim Leyland spent about an hour being congratulated by seemingly everyone in baseball for leading the Tigers run to the World Series. Agents were everywhere, many of them shadowed by their free agents – a la Jerry Maguire.

The best dressed people at Baseball’s Winter Meetings are the unemployed. Nearly 500 young, jobless baseball hopefuls show up at the Baseball Winter Meetings in their new suits, hoping to land front office jobs with minor league teams.

The most amazing guy to watch, though, is Peter Gammons. The Boston Globe and ESPN reporter owns the Baseball Winter Meetings. The lobby is Gammons’ domain. He can’t walk five feet without an agent, reporter, general manager or fan stopping him to talk.

Still, the winter meetings are not his favorite time of the year.

“It doesn’t beat the World Series or Spring Training,” Gammons told me shortly after one of his updates for ESPNNews.

The Winter Meetings continue to grow and Gammons says the expansion has taken away some of the fun.

“It’s getting out of control because there are too many people and the general managers don’t come out to the lobby,” he said. “They just sit in their room. It’s too big. You don’t talk about the game anywhere near as much as you used to.”

That’s it for day one. I’m heading to the convention floor for tomorrow’s updates. As always, any new updates will be posted immediately.