There are a couple other sides to the winter meetings that you guys don’t usually get to hear about, read about or see, so I figured I’d share them with you this morning. My day started early – 7 a.m. to be exact – as I met with a group of students from Indiana University, my alma mater.

A huge portion of the people at the meetings are young students or people right out of college seeking jobs in baseball. There’s a huge job fair in which hundreds of minor league teams (and some big league clubs) hire employees for the upcoming season. Chris Haydock, our assistant director of player development, and I, both went to school at IU and a group of kids who came down asked to meet with us so we gladly spent some time chatting with them about how to crack into the industry.

After that, I had breakfast with two former Dodger colleagues, Tom Seidler and Dan Simon. Tom, whose mother was a co-owner of the Dodgers with the O’Malleys, owns the Visalia Oaks, a minor league team in that town. Dan, who used to design all sorts of merchandise and other things at the Dodgers, now owns his own company called Studio Simon, which is responsible for designing a huge portion of minor league logos, brand identities and the like. Not surprisingly, he actually designed all the logos for the Winter Meetings, too.

Dan has a booth at the trade show here and Tom came to see many of his clients at the trade show, which is another huge portion of what goes on behind the scenes. Every imaginable promotional company, bat maker, bobblehead creator, etc. is here trying to get baseball teams to utilize their services for the coming season.

Anyway, those are two sides of the meetings that rarely get any attention, so I figured you might enjoy hearing about it. Stay tuned for more news later today.

Once again, I apologize for only getting to post at the end of the day, but we’ve been going non-stop since arriving here yesterday morning. Today we officially got Saito back, which is a huge boost for the team, given all that he did last year. When you compare his numbers to the other relievers around the league, he stacked up against just about everyone one of them. We’re all hoping for a repeat.

If the reports are all accurate, it appears that three Dodgers might be coming to the end of their careers with the team – Greg Maddux, J.D. Drew and Eric Gagne. If that does happen, there will of course be a touch of sadness, particularly for Eric, who all Dodger fans really grew to love over the years. And while I’m certainly not saying we won’t sign him, Scott Boras informed the media tonight that Eric will likely sign this week and I know that from Ned’s perspective, it’s tough to give a ton of guaranteed money to someone who you haven’t seen pitch and who just started throwing a ball for the first time last week.

At the end of the day, if Eric decides to leave for the most money, I wouldn’t really blame him. I’m sure he’s hopeful that his arm and his back will recover, but if they don’t, this could be his final contract and if that’s the case, he probably feels like he has to go for the most money. I guess that’s all I can say until I know if he actually signs elsewhere.

Most of our time today was spent meeting with various companies that we deal with throughout the year – ESPN, FOX, TNT (our new broadcast partner), representatives from the Hall of Fame, MLB photos and numerous others. This is a great chance for us to come up with new ideas for ’07 and learn about some of the things other teams are doing.

We also had the Baseball America gala this afternoon for three hours (where we officially received Organization of the Year honors), followed by a team dinner at Lonestar Steakhouse, compliments of Tommy Lasorda, who sits on the Board of Directors there.

We just got back to the hotel and even at 10 pm, there are probably a thousand people milling around in the lobby. I’ll be joining them shortly for a little free time as soon as I post this.

I know some of you asked about when the new jerseys will be available and they should be any day now. Keep checking back, as we expect a story on the front of the site as soon as they’re reading for purchase.

As you’ve probably seen on the front of the site, we were named as Organization of the Year today by Baseball America, which is an incredible honor. We’ve never received this in the 25 years they’ve been giving out this award, which says a lot about what is going right these days at the Dodgers. From the scouting to the player development departments and the big league staff and front office, this is really pretty special.

I remember sitting at last year’s Baseball America gala and they honored the Braves with the Organization of the Year, and to think of what they’ve accomplished in the last dozen or so years, I can only hope we’ll be back on that path to winning year-in and year-out.

It’s been an extremely busy day here in Orlando. We took the red eye last night, arrived at 6:00 a.m. and headed to the hotel here at DisneyWorld, where we had League PR meetings all day long, followed by media briefings with Ned, a dinner/cocktail hour for all of the league’s PR Personnel and then another one with all of our minor league affiliates. It’s nearly nine o’clock here and this is the first chance I’ve had to stop and post something, so hopefully we’ll have more fun stuff in the next few days.

As for all the Manny rumors floating around – don’t get too excited. There hasn’t been much news coming out of MLB today, so the 200 media members in the lobby tend to float a lot of rumors. I even got a call from one reporter a few minutes ago telling me that he heard the deal was done. Definitely not true.

Enjoy the hot stove. Just keep your hands away from the flame.

Many of you have been asking about it and now you can get copies of Dodgers Magazine, the official publication of the Los Angeles Dodgers, delivered to your home.

For a limited time you can receive a package of the six editions of the 2006 Dodgers Magazine and the 2006 Dodger Yearbook for the bargain price of $25 (saving you $20). You can order them right here at dodgers.com.

The 2006 edition of Dodgers Magazine featured cover stories on Nomar Garciaparra, Jeff Kent and Dodger rookies like Russell Martin, Andre Ethier and Jonathan Broxton, as well as a collector’s edition looking back at the 1981 Dodger World Championship team. You can also get a copy of the 2006 postseason magazine, which was sold only at Dodger Stadium during the NLDS.

We’ve really enjoyed putting this magazine together with a great mixture of current player features, dazzling photos and fond looks back at some of the great moments in Dodger history. If you have to satisfy your hunger for baseball during the cold winter months, this is a way to do it.

Check it out and hopefully you’ll have just as much fun reliving the 2006 season as we all did the first time around.

This morning, I was fortunate enough to be one of several members of the Dodger organization to join Don Newcombe, "Sweet" Lou Johnson and Frank McCourt at the annual Los Angeles OIC Breakfast of Champions. Even if you’ve never heard of this organization, don’t stop reading. This was really cool.

The organization, whose slogan is Helping People Help Themselves, have named an award after Newk and the winner this year was Frank McCourt, who graciously accepted it on behalf of everyone at the Dodgers for the community efforts at the team. Sweet Lou, who introduced Frank, was nearly in tears on the dais because of everything, he said, that the organization and the McCourts have done for him. Frank’s speech was really very good, but the highlight probably wasn’t him or any of the high profile speakers like L.A. County Supervisor Yvonne Burke or Congresswoman Maxine Waters.

The final honoree was Eva Mae Tucker, a graduate of the LA OIC, which serves as a mentoring program for African-American and other minority youth in Los Angeles. Though probably only in her early 20s, her speech was incredible and I’ve asked her to send me a copy that I will post portions of to the blog when I get it. UPDATE: Here’s the file: Download Achievement.pdf

Anyway, while this isn’t baseball news, it’s an organization supported by the Dodgers and certainly worthy of your time if you’re looking for a way to give back to the community.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably a Dodger fan and if you’re a Dodger fan – or a fan of LA sports at all – you’ve probably read Steve Bisheff countless times in your life. For more than four decades, Steve has covered sports here in Los Angeles and today, he penned his final column for the Orange County Register before retiring.

It seems kind of strange to wish him well and congratulate him on a blog, given that in his final article, he talks about the days of crafting articles on a type writer, but the entire Dodger organization would be remiss if we did not congratulate him publicly. In the few years that I’ve known him, Steve has always been extremely professional and thorough and I’ve really enjoyed reading his work. In the farewell spread of today’s OCR, there’s an extremely complimentary quote from Tommy Lasorda, whom Bish covered for many years.

There’s no doubt, the world of sports media is changing almost every day. We even had someone post clips from yesterday’s press conference on You Tube, which is kind of hard to fathom. But there’s a lot to be said for an old school guy who did his job the right way and in all my time at the Dodgers, I’ve never heard anyone say a bad word about Steve.

So get your last read while you can and be sure to check out his favorite ten columns over the years, including this one on Vin Scully from last season.

Good luck, Steve. You’ll be missed in the press box and we all wish you and Marsha well in retirement.

Everything went very well today at the press conference and to be honest, it would be really tough to find two nicer guys than the two newest Dodgers. While that might not mean as much to everyone else, for someone who has to regularly ask them to give their time to the media, community, sponsors, fans and other team events, I’m really looking forward to working with these guys.

In response to the comment about how bad the audio on the conference calls sound, I’m glad to say the problem isn’t on the Dodgers’ end. We actually have a top-notch conference call system that we use, but unfortunately when writers call-in from across the country on cell phones, the sound gets worse and worse. It sometimes sounds like they’re riding a bike through a wind tunnel, but there’s not much I can do other than ask them to please hang up and try to reconnect.

Also, as most of you know by now, the names are back on the jerseys due to popular demand. This was the first time a Dodger donned the new jerseys, which also have a couple other very minor differences that few will notice (the shadows have been dropped from the lettering on the back and the blue piping is no longer on the road jerseys). There’s also a new batting practice jersey that we’ll put up online once it’s available for you guys to purchase it, but I think it looks pretty cool.

That’s just about all we’ve got from now. We’re going to take Juan to the Clipper game tonight, since he’s a big basketball fan, so if you happen to be going, keep an eye out for him on the Jumbotron.

I’ll try to write more later today after the press conference, but in the meantime, we’d all like to wish a happy birthday to Vin Scully. He did a rare call-in this morning to AM 570 because they asked to wish him a happy birthday and he obliged. I learned from this that he’s had three hole-in-ones, which is pretty darn impressive. I’m still seeking No. 1.

KLAC posts podcasts on their site, but this one is not up yet. Check back later if you missed the interview and are longing to hear the Voice of the Dodgers during the winter.

Twelve years after we first drafted him, Randy Wolf is coming home to the Dodgers. We have signed him and plan to have him and Juan Pierre here tomorrow for a media conference that you guys will be able to watch (live, I think) on dodgers.com. Later today, there will be a conference call audio link posted to the site that you can also listen to.

As much as it pains me to root for him, of course I will. However, given that Randy is a graduate of El Camino Real, which beat my high school baseball team, Chatsworth, at Dodger Stadium in back-to-back years in 1993 and 1994, it’s hard to believe he’s on our team now.

However, because he grew up in the area and played against us regularly, I’ve been following his career for the last decade and to be honest, I’m really excited he’s going to be with us. One national writer told me yesterday he has thought that Randy would be the best bargain of the winter and the fact that he took less guaranteed money to come home to LA says a lot about him. 

Our rotation is really starting to take shape and one thing any true baseball fan knows is that you can never have enough pitching. There are going to be a lot of talented arms in Vero Beach in February and as Ned has pointed out, one or some of those arms might even help us land a bat before we start heading to Dodgertown.

You wanted it. You got it. OK, so it’s been a few days since I wrote and hopefully I’ll have some official news on Randy Wolf tomorrow. For now, I have to say that one of the funniest things I’ve read in a long time is the reference to Borat on this blog.

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. I’ll write more in the morning.