Off to Music City for the Winter Meetings

In a few hours, the MASNsports.com contingent will be boarding a Southwest Airlines flight out of Baltimore-Washington Thurgood Marshall International Airport, bound for Nashville and baseball's Winter Meetings at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center.

While the Winter Meetings get lots of attention for being the place major league executives and player agents meet and mingle to discuss possible trades and free agent signings, you might be interested to know that the real purpose of the confab is rooted in baseball's minor leagues, which actually host the event.

Young people interested in working in baseball attend workshops and professional development sessions, and interview with minor league executives in hopes of landing a job. There are social gatherings for each major league club's minor league affiliates, along with gatherings for all levels of the minor league management spectrum. Major league types gather, too - from athletic trainers to traveling secretaries to public relations professionals to merchandising experts - sharing best practices, learning how to do their jobs better and more efficiently, and enhancing the fan experience.

One of the most interesting facets of the Winter Meetings is the trade show, where various businesses set up shop to try and engage minor league teams. Think of anything that a logo can be put on, anything that can be fodder for a themed night at a minor league park or anything that a baseball team might need, from game equipment to uniforms to giveaways. Yes, the people that book the Zooperstars are there, but I've yet to see the Cowboy Monkey Rodeo, the dog-riding primates that are hands-down the best thing I've ever seen in terms of minor league entertainment (just ask Stephen Strasburg).

Yes, there will be sets for ESPN, MLB Network and MLB.TV, along with MLB Network Radio and other media outlets that broadcast news about the sport. Watch carefully and you might see your favorite baseball writers and bloggers in the background. We do a lot of walking at the Winter Meetings, particularly at a venue like Opryland, which is so big that you need to leave a trail of bread crumbs to find your from your room - there are nearly 2,900 of them - to the media workroom and back again. Comfortable shoes are a necessity, given the number of daily miles logged (yes, we measure it in miles).

Chris Johnson and I will be keeping you abreast of all things Nationals during the Winter Meetings. But now is a good time to go over a few ground rules about how we at MASNsports.com approach the event.

You'll hear a lot of rumors during the week, and so will we. We'll do our best to vet everything that we hear to determine its veracity and to try and weed out what isn't, to the best of our knowledge, rooted in truth. If you've read my pre-Winter Meetings manifesto before, you've heard me talk about how some media outlets just throw spaghetti on the wall, hoping a few strands will stick (great method of determining when your pasta is done). More than anything, we want to give you accurate information you can trust, not hedge our bets and hope a spaghetti strand sticks. We try to ferret out what's real and what's fallacy, focusing on the former and ignoring the latter once we've identified it (and told you so). And there's a lot to ignore, believe me. It's astonishing the number of times during the Winter Meetings that reporters will find themselves chasing a rumor based solely on some unsubstantiated nugget of information that's somehow taken on a life of its own.

We'll arrive Sunday, though the Winter Meetings don't officially begin until the following day (however, sometimes teams jump the gun schedule-wise, as the Nats did when the signed Jayson Werth on Sunday night, before the press conference dais had even been constructed). From Monday through Wednesday, we'll meet daily with Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo, usually in the late afternoon or early evening, for a recap of that day's activities. There will be a media sit-down with new manager Dusty Baker during the week, and the Winter Meetings will conclude Thursday morning with the Rule 5 draft.

You can check back on MASNsports.com to keep up with everything involving the Nationals. Follow Chris on Twitter at @masnCJ and me at @masnPete. We'll post some video interviews to the site and you can check out Mel Antonen's reports that will air each evening on "The Mid-Atlantic Sports Report" on MASN - Mel will be in Nashville keeping track of the breaking news and big picture alike. Our MASNsports.com social media/multimedia team of Bobby Blanco and Olivia Witherite will be taking you behind the scenes and helping you feel like you're right there with us.

By the time we head back Thursday afternoon, we'll have swapped information with our fellow reporters from other cities, begged and pleaded with our front office insiders for confirmation of reports, consumed adult beverages with the game's movers and shakers, debunked rumors, verified information and probably never have left the Opryland premises. Seriously, last year in San Diego, I went outside twice - to walk from the back entrance to the front entrance of the Manchester Grand Hyatt, just to see the sunshine and feel the West Coast warmth. There is no sightseeing, no trips to Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, the Grand Ole Opry or a Predators game. Maybe a cheeseburger delivery from Rotier's via OrderUp, but that's about as downhome Nashville as I'm going to get.

It's all baseball, all the time. If there were 25 hours in a day, they'd all be consumed by chatter about pitchers and catchers, years and dollars, agents and GMs.

There are some that detest the Winter Meetings for a variety of reasons, but I'm not one of them. It's incredibly exciting to be at the center of the baseball universe, chatting up some of the most well-known executives and agents in the game, and trying to deliver the most up-to-date information for our readers. There's no place I'd rather be - even with little sleep, irregular mealtimes and spotty Wi-Fi signals.

So check back frequently on MASNsports.com, and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, and be ready to get all the breaking news should the Nationals swing a deal or sign a free agent. We'll talk to you from Music City!