Winter meetings: Nobody seems to be in a hurry at the baseball rodeo
LAS VEGAS – Baseball and Las Vegas share an ethos in that neither has use for a clock, and in fact find the clock detrimental to the spirit of the activity, and even beyond that would like to know why everyone is so hung up on the stupid clock.
There is one, exactly one, that could be located here, and that is in the hotel gym, forever stuck at 7:45, whether a.m. or p.m. seems not important. This being here, there’s probably a good reason to have it forever be morning or evening, something along the lines of it being a good time to buy two Kit Kat bars, a bag of M&Ms and a Gatorade for $18.
Or the battery ran out, though that seems an unlikely episode of apathy for a place that has never allowed a lightbulb to remain dead for longer than 30 seconds.
No, they insist it be forever 7:45, late enough to be up and about, early enough to stay up and about, and who has time to look at a clock anyway. The night is young and lasts forever, or until the bullpen is empty, or until Mikey starts calling the cocktail waitress Honey. When her name is Jessica. Says so right there.
Also, baseball and Las Vegas generally come with a beer, any time of day or night, because time, like long-term sobriety, does not exist. Therefore, the lobby gift shop offers a free shot with the purchase of two cans of beer, the perfect impulse buy alongside one’s morning paper.
Which may or may not explain a few things.
For instance, those in their evening clothes, clumping through the lobby at daybreak, share the gait and expression of the man who took strike three to end a ballgame. Or the man whispered the get-it-done price of a Boras client. The man staring at the change from a twenty on two Kit Kat bars, a bag of M&Ms and a Gatorade.
The winter meetings operate in that vortex. The sad news of the latest stadium hopes in Tampa comes with stale cigarette smoke, which seems appropriate, and a clanging Wheel of Fortune slot machine, which does not. Shortstop Troy Tulowitzki became a free agent Tuesday, two years and $38 million short of when he was supposed to, except he’s still going to get the $38 million (and the two years) and this is the very definition of house money.
The wealthiest here get their private rooms in order to gamble their private fortunes. The rest do not get to meet Bryce Harper, Manny Machado or their representatives.
And the New York Mets become the show everybody has to see, because anything can happen and, unlike the hundreds who walk the halls here in cowboy hats and boots and flannel, this does sort of feel like their first rodeo. Yeah, the rodeo is in town, too, and it gets to share the vortex, so when someone sighs and asks when it was that J.T. Realmuto became the next Johnny Bench, the answer is, the moment a New York baseball team was rumored to be trading for him.
And Joe Maddon, after winning almost six out of every 10 games and a World Series in of all places Chicago, must explain that he is not bothered by the notion he might be on his way out. So the winter meetings/Las Vegas vortex expands to include the Cubs averaging 97 wins over four years and that not being enough. And when there’s a rumor New York Yankees president Randy Levine could become President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, the real confusion was reserved for Harold Baines becoming a Hall of Famer.
“I am not offended,” Maddon said of his potential free agency at year’s end. “I don’t feel badly about it. I get it.
“And furthermore, the concept that Theo [Epstein] and I have any kind of a disengagement or a lack of philosophical sameness is untrue.”
Baseball will leave here without having placed Machado or Harper, probably, or many of the top 50 or so free agents. The Los Angeles Dodgers may still be overstocked in outfielders and pitchers and short in catchers and relievers. The Mets aren’t quite relevant yet. The Yankees haven’t caught the Boston Red Sox yet. The Philadelphia Phillies haven’t spent any stupid money yet, though they did shell out $50 million for Andrew McCutchen on Tuesday. Stupid money wins here every day. And if the Phillies don’t, the Chicago White Sox might. There do remain a few useful players in Seattle, which seems destined to change. Same for Miami.
Something will happen nobody saw coming. That happens every day here too.
Nobody seems in any hurry, see. There are no real deadlines, only gusts of impatience followed by two beers and a (free) shot. There is no night, no day. There are no clocks. There is a rodeo.
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