It's an eerie little window of quiet in the baseball world, which is just starting to end today. You could see it start last week at the Dallas-Forth Worth Airport, as weary baseball people waited for the flights home. You could see the exhaustion in their faces after four days of non-stop baseball: up early, working all day, hanging out at the bar until forced to return to their rooms at 2 AM Central Standard Time by polite but insistent hotel security people.

Baseball is a social business. That rival GM kicking your butt on getting the middle reliever you need might also have been your double play partner in AA or your catcher in the Sally League. So once the serious work is done, you kick back, have a drink or seven and relive the old days. The stories are rich and deep — whether you're talking to a legend of the game or just a washed up player in town trying to find a minor league coaching job.

And yes, both Omar Minaya and Brian Cashman were seen at the lobby bar, but not surprisingly both kept their guard up and had little to say other than the usual pleasantries. It's hard to blame them: say the wrong thing and it's on the back page or atop a Web page somewhere. Still, the social aspect of the game matters enough to both that they each made sure they came down from their command posts to at least say hello.

One of the attractions of baseball is its social nature. You see guys on different teams talking during the game when a runner is on base. They chat before the game and sometimes even hang out afterwards. Guys in baseball like to talk, and as someone who covers the game, I say thank God. In my professional experience, only politicians are more likely to tell you things they shouldn't — and more often the pols have an ulterior motive. Sometimes, the baseball guys do, too...a bit of gamesmanship to force the hand of another GM — that's why you saw some interesting trades reported to be "all but done" turn into pixie dust. The front office people use us, we use them and everybody has a drink.

The Winter Meetings are like a giant class reunion for the world's most social sport. Old friends reconnect, new ones are made and futures are built. And, of course, when people talk, there's no small amount of gossip. Who's going where? Who talked to whom?

Come nighttime, baseball royalty mixes in with minor league front office people and the media. Most of the baseball people are done working for the day. For the writers — after filing their dailies and anything else that develops — hanging at the bar is final work phase of the day, not a time to kick back and relax.

Since the serious drinking doesn't start until after most dailies' deadlines (about midnight, EST), no one is there to break stories, but to meet the guy (or gal) who will help them break the next one and collect the dirt. If there is something major, the writers know to go easy on the booze so they can file something for the Web or the late final edition. That way that the day never really ends is, in part, why one of my old bosses, a beat writer for one of the big New York papers, calls the meetings "five days of hell."

While that may be overstating it, the beat guys know the tough time of year is when the tarp stays on the field 24/7. There's no rhythm of games, travel, injuries and lineup changes to feed the machine. Staying in this game, let alone coming out on top, requires old-school reporting skills and the liver of a 20-year-old.

So, if it seems like the baseball world went dark for a few days — well, basically, it did. The baseball people partied like they were 25 years old for four days — and then the reality that they weren't 25 anymore set in. They returned to their homes, families, minivans and a bit of recovery, before heading back to the search for middle relief. The writers kept their ears — and cell phones — open, but prayed for a few days of quiet, having not really recovered from the season, the postseason, the GM meetings and now the Winter Meetings.

Now that quiet time is over — probably until Christmas Eve. There's tons of things brewing, as we noted in our Rumor Mill this week — plus the non-tender deadline is less than a week away, something likely to impact a number of deals.

The peace was short-lived. But it always is, isn't it?

No Vazquez to Mets, No Regrets
You can't really fault the Diamondbacks for taking the White Sox offer of Chris Young, Orlando Hernandez and a minor league arm for Javier Vazquez over the Mets' offer of Kris Benson and Brian Bannister.

Unless Arizona is picking up the vast majority of Vazquez' 2-year, $24 million salary, the White Sox kind of got (pale) hosed. Hernandez is likely to put up numbers not far below those of Vazquez' and they get Young and a young arm to boot.

I was among the many who thought Vazquez might be a good fit with the Mets. But not at that kind of price. I think it's safe for Mets' fans to assume that Omar Minaya's pursuit of Barry Zito will continue, despite denials all around.

Imagine Being As Good As Lennon
A couple of weeks back, I called out a writer for less than spectacular journalism practices. This week, I wanted to point out the opposite: a guy who works his beat exceptionally well: David Lennon of Newsday.

While New York is blessed with talented, hard-working beat guys such as Adam Rubin, Mark Hale, Ben Shpigel, Steve Popper, Dan Graziano and Peter Abraham — Lennon is the guy on the Mets' beat who shined the most from Dallas. He seemed to be ahead of people — and saw though a number of lame denials and got the real story, certainly when it comes to Barry Zito.

Competing with guys willing to always make the extra call to hunt something down, Lennon was the guy making two more calls after that to try and find out what was really going behind the smokescreens and misdirection being offered by the Mets and A's, among other teams.

With those kind of skills and drive, I have no doubt Lennon could cover anything — in sports or out. In fact, I'd have killed for a guy with his talents back in my news-side assignment desk days. Good reporters don't grow on trees — and Lennon is a very good one.

Writing Up Writers
By the way, I've been asked why I talk about other writers and critique their skills and/or performance.

The answer is fairly simple: I think we owe it to the readers to have some ability to judge the filter through which they get their news. There are no objective journalists — anywhere; all humans are subjective. Throw in work ethic, methodology and skills, and you begin to have a picture of how to weigh what's reported.

Unlike me, or Mark Healey or the rest of the GB staff, who have to answer directly to you — and trust me, we welcome that — there is generally no way for the average reader to interact with the writers you read in the papers or on some other sites, no way to gauge them. I'm hoping these infrequent comments help put things in better perspective.

I'm not doing it behind a pseudonym — and I have to be in the same room with the guys right after I comment on them, which is more than you can say for some metro-area sports columnists. And of course, we'll always offer equal time for a rebuttal.

One other question asked is this: Who died and made you the judge of journalism performance?

Unlike most sports writers, I spent a big hunk of my career doing exactly that, evaluating reporters, either running an entire news operation, an assignment desk or a magazine. I've hired and fired reporters and writers, taught dozens (probably hundreds) their craft — and even lectured about journalism process to college journalism students. And talking to the same sources, working the same stories, I can also offer insight about the situation on the ground — to put these abstract issues into context, something even the media columnists for the Post and Daily News really can't do.