12:15 AM Eastern

Rod Barajas has officially declined the Blue Jays’ offer of arbitration – Bastian did the legwork on that one, credit where it’s due!  Now go vote for Tom and then go to bed.

Rational, reasonable comments are always welcome!

7:50 PM Eastern

From a staking-out-the-Indianapolis-Downtown-Marriott perspective, anyway.  As I write this, the media workroom is still pretty full, with only a handful of people having left for the night, but with most doing their final filings – just like I am.

The first day of the Winter Meetings went by pretty quietly, with the big rumours coming out of Detroit. An Edwin Jackson trade is apparently imminent (though some rumours have up to a dozen suitors) and the Tigers are shopping Curtis Granderson, as well.  The Cardinals may sign Brad Penny before the night is out, and Rod Barajas will decline the Blue Jays’ arbitration offer by tonight’s midnight deadline.

Otherwise, not too much is going on.

The rumour mill continues to spin, with the spreading-like-wildfire-before-being-shot-down rumour of the day having Roy Halladay going to the Tampa Bay Rays for B.J. Upton and Wade Davis, with the Jays then shipping Upton off to a third team.  The backpedaling on this one started less than an hour after it got out.  It’s true that the Jays are talking trade with everybody, and that G.M. Alex Anthopoulos made a call today to try to get a third team involved in a deal that he was trying to make – but that’s as far as this one goes.  Most people continue to believe that Halladay is all but signed, sealed and delivered to the Yankees or the Red Sox, but I’m thinking that there are still several teams alive in the chase, including the Angels, Dodgers, Cardinals and Mets (who would need to get a third team involved).

Anthopoulos held court with the Toronto assemblage this afternoon, as most every team’s G.M. does every day with his city’s media, but he entertained us in the hotel room of Jays’ V.P. of communications Jay Stenhouse.  In the past, these sessions have usually been held just outside the media workroom or thereabouts or even in the G.M.’s own suite, but Alex is well aware of his profile here as the newest guy with the biggest chip to play.  Not only is he trying to avoid the circus, but he’s doing it James Bond-style.

The man no doubt learned his lesson at the feet of J.P. Ricciardi with regards to the effects of leaks to the press.  Not only does Alex want to make sure there aren’t any leaks, he wants to make sure there isn’t any way for any leaks to leak.  He’s having all his discussions with other G.M.’s on a one-on-one (or at most, two-on-two with Tony LaCava at his side) basis, and he’s doing all those discussions in his own suite, with all other G.M.’s having to (and being happy to) come to his suite for the meetings.  That’s so he doesn’t have to walk through the hordes of reporters in the lobby, which would doubtless slow him down – the man doesn’t say no to anyone, it’s very endearing – and lead to potential media stake-outs.  He met with a couple of reporters last night on a floor other than the one where he’s staying, just so no one would know where his room was and stake it out to see which teams are coming to see him.  And yes, he mentioned – mostly, but not all, in jest – that he’s not shaking hands with anyone since he’s sick, and if other G.M.s get sick, we’ll know they were meeting with him.  He absolutely refuses to discuss specific details of trades involving specific players, but he’s happy to speak in general terms.  There will be no leaks coming out of Blue Jay land with regards to any Roy Halladay talks, and if there are leaks at all, Anthopoulos will easily know from whence they came.

Among the other items that were covered in talking to the G.M.:

-There are multiple balls in the air on multiple trades involving multiple players, some of which are interdependent.

-In talking to other G.M.s, Alex has made every single player on the Blue Jays available in trade.

-The packages that were bandied about in Roy Halladay rumours in July don’t have much of an effect on what’s being discussed now, since so many things have changed since then (he only spoke generally about this, of course).

- The Jays need to add a catcher, and while it was likelier to happen in trade than in free agency, it isn’t necessarily likelier anymore.  Of course, that could change at anytime.

I filed 16 audio clips of our meeting with Alex, and it’ll be tough for even our fantastic sportscasters to get them all on the air, so I’m hoping some brave soul back at the station finds a way to put the audio up here.  In fact, I’m even leaving this space for them to use:

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After we were done with Anthopoulos and after I had written my voicers and was walking off to a remote location to record them (can’t disturb the delicate genii in the media workroom, after all), the folks at the MLB Network pulled Alex aside for an interview, so I stopped to watch.  They played some fantastic old clips of Halladay – from the first time he pulled on a Blue Jays cap and smiled wide to show off a mouth full of braces to the Higginson game and all the way through to today, then asked Alex what he was going to do with him.  The answers were nothing new – Doc wants to win, his timetable may be different from the Jays’, he’d love to stay and the Jays would love to have him, he’s in the last year of his contract, etc.

Alex also talked about the way the rest of the team sets up, and specifically named Jason Frasor and Jeremy Accardo when talking about the back end of the bullpen, meaning that Accardo might not be as likely a non-tender candidate as some seem to think.  He added that Scott Downs is best-suited to be a set-up guy (not exactly beating the drum to make a trade with that ringing endorsement).  Alex also said that there might be a couple of spots open in the outfield corners (meaning Jose Bautista may well be a likely non-tender candidate), but that he’s still high on Travis Snider and he loves Vernon Wells (beating that drum, but with no chance of it working).

While I was waiting for them to get to Alex, and then watching the interview, I completely forgot that I left my phone in the workroom.  Bryan Angus, who produces The Bullpen with Mike Hogan, called to arrange an interview for tomorrow morning, and the phone annoyed Jordan Bastian.  And also Spencer Fordin but honestly, it don’t take much.

A live chat is a definite possibility for Day Two.  If you all go vote for Tom Cheek immediately after reading this.  I’m going to www.facebook.com/baseballhall right now to cast my vote!

Rational, reasonable comments are always welcome!

1:05 PM Eastern

FIRST THINGS FIRST  – CAST YOUR VOTE FOR TOM CHEEK!!!!!  The voice of the Blue Jays, of baseball and of summer in Canada is on the ballot to get onto the final ballot for the Ford C. Frick Award for Broadcasting Excellence, an honour that would get him into the broadcasters’ wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.  It’s up to us to make sure he gets his due.  Go to www.facebook.com/baseballhall, go to the “poll” section and please vote for Tom.  Do it every day.  Thank you.

Now then……I just got back here to the media room at the Indianapolis Downtown Marriott  after taking a walk down into the lobby to see what was going on and the answer is – not much.

Your typical winter meetingsness is as follows – a bunch of writers, reporters, bloggists and such hang around in the media workroom or in the lobby.  They talk, they catch up with old friends, they try to find out what teams are looking for and cross-reference it with what the team they’re covering is looking for or trying to move, and they wait.  Wait for a glimpse of an agent walking through a lobby, a GM coming out of a meeting room, a posting that an announcement is forthcoming.

That’s what I’m doing right now.

So far, beyond the Halladay stuff (which is ubiquitous – the first time I’ve ever written that, by the way) , there seems to be a lot of Seattle and Detroit talk.  The Tigers are looking to move Edwin Jackson and might be looking to deal Curtis Granderson, and the Mariners may be getting in on big free agents John Lackey and Jason Bay after having already signed Chone Figgins.  I know from conversations with him in the past that Bay would love to play in Seattle – he grew up a Mariners fan.

I did run into Pat Gillick in the lobby as he was rushing upstairs for some reason or another (to get away from the media?) but he stopped to talk to me for a quick minute.  So quick that I had to decide whether to ask him the “at this time” question or to talk about Tom Cheek and the Frick voting.  I chose the latter, since his answer about the former has never changed, and he said he’d go on Facebook and vote for Tom.  So you should too.  Next time I run into Gillick I’ll ask him about coming to Toronto to be a part of Alex Anthopoulos’ team of senior advisors, and he’ll tell me that he’s very happy doing what he’s doing with the Phillies.

We get some face time with Alex at 4:00, and I’ll provide audio from that.  He won’t say anything – he has learned well.

Right now I’m going to cut up the audio of Ozzie Smith from this morning’s news conference about umpire Doug Harvey and manager Whitey Herzog’s impending inducements into the Hall of Fame, having been voted in by the veterans’ committee.  They’re both deserving, certainly, but it remains a travesty that the first executive director of the MLBPA, Marvin Miller, remains on the outside looking in.  Miller fell two votes short of election.  Tom Seaver said that outside Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson, no one has had a greater impact on baseball than Miller, and he’s right.  But there seem to be some who were on the other side of the table from Miller who are determined not to put him in the Hall, which is wrong-headed.  It makes me wonder if the nature of the process with Miller was so incredibly adversarial that even now, 26 years after his retirement, the executives on the committee still don’t want to give the 92 year-old the satisfaction of getting into the Hall.  It’s sad, really.

Back with more if anything breaks, or at the very least to wrap up Day One later this evening.  Rational, reasonable comments are always welcome!

2:55 PM Eastern

FIRST THINGS FIRST  – CAST YOUR VOTE FOR TOM CHEEK!!!!!  The voice of the Blue Jays, of baseball and of summer in Canada is on the ballot to get onto the final ballot for the Ford C. Frick Award for Broadcasting Excellence, an honour that would get him into the broadcasters’ wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.  It’s up to us to make sure he gets his due.  Go to www.facebook.com/baseballhall, go to the “poll” section and please vote for Tom.  Do it every day.  Thank you.

Now then…………….since I took over the baseball beat on The Fan590 back in 2001, I’ve been assigned to cover most of the Baseball Winter Meetings that have gone on, which is pretty impressive considering the team I’ve been covering hasn’t even had a sniff of the playoffs over that period (almost twice that period, actually, but who’s counting?).  I’ve been to Boston, Orlando and Dallas, and to Nashville twice.  I missed the Corey Koskie year, when the meetings were in Anaheim, and I was heartbroken to miss last season’s meetings in the quiet burg of Las Vegas, but this year, I’m in Indianapolis.

It seems a nice enough town – my true mission is to run into Schneider at some point, or at the very least Ms. Romano – but, stunningly, it’s no Vegas.  Which might actually be more conducive to having some work actually get done.

And make no mistake, there’s a ton of work to actually get done here in Indy this week.  Marco Scutaro is a Red Sock and Chone Figgins is all but delivered to Seattle, but the three biggest free agents are still sitting out there waiting to sign and John Lackey, Matt Holliday and Jason Bay could all find new homes this week.  Jays fans are hoping that Bay stays put, because that way the Red Sox wouldn’t feel it necessary to sign Holliday.  A Holliday signing in Boston means that the Cardinals would get the Sox’ first-round pick as compensation, and the Jays’ comp pick for losing Scutaro would fall to a second.

Beyond those big three free agents, there’s the guy about whom I’m going to be hearing my entire time here – one Harry Leroy Halladay III.  Make no mistake, Halladay will be in another uniform by mid-February.  The big question is – will it be sooner or later?  Big trades used to happen with regularity at the winter meetings (usually when Whitey Herzog or Randy Smith were involved, but I digress) and by making the right big deal with the spotlight on him, Alex Anthopoulos has the opportunity to serve notice that he’s not just a bright, young guy with a new job but that he’s a dynamic force with which to be reckoned, much like Theo Epstein and Andrew Friedman before him.

I know everyone is saying that it’ll be the Yankees or the Red Sox, because it always is, and some Blue Jays fans are now whipping themselves up into a frenzy over Jesus Montero and Casey Kelly.  There’s a reasonable chance that that’s what’s going to wind up happening, yes, but don’t write off the Angels and Dodgers for sure, and perhaps a few other teams, as well.  If the Rangers can convince Halladay that he’d be comfortable there, the Jays would love to make a deal with Texas.  Colorado has a real chance too, if the Rockies are willing to part with the right guys (Chacin II – can you believe it?), and the Cubs, Mets and White Sox are always sitting there, lying in wait.  It may be the Yankees or Red Sox, but it may very well not be.  I have a feeling I’m going to be spending the next four days finding out who is more serious than whom.

Right now, though, I’m enjoying my second-ever NFL game live and in person.  This Lucas Oil Stadium is really, really nice, though I’m in a press box that feels as though it’s in another time zone.  The Colts (who also played in the only other NFL game I have attended, in Miami in 1990) are looking to tie an NFL record with a 22nd straight regular-season win, and they’re looking pretty good at the moment, leading 24-10 at halftime.  It’s too sterile in this press box, though.   The windows are closed, and we’re situated above the final row of seating in the upper deck – that would be the 600 level for those of you who are more used to Rogers Centre terms (66,321 are here today for this game).

So, in the second half, I’m going to try to go down into the bowl and do a little exploring.  It’s my second foreign ballpark in just over a week, after all!  I managed to tour AT&T Park in San Francisco when I was out there last weekend and took some snapshots – among those, a piece of a San Francisco Giants Wall of Fame that’s only slightly less difficult to get on than it is to get into the Hockey Hall of Fame (Greg Minton?  Scott Garrelts?  I mean, I liked those guys, but seriously?).  I’ll put up some pictures from that trip when I get back home on Friday.

Hopefully on Friday the Blue Jays will look a whole lot different than they do right now.  Don’t hold your breath for a ton of moves, though.  I expect they’ll sign one of the remaining free agent catchers (though they could wait for the non-tenders, which come out NEXT Saturday – two days after the meetings break up), and I think the odds of a Lyle Overbay trade are better than those of a Halladay trade – but that’s not to say both won’t happen.

I’ll be a real presence down here in Indy for you – posting plenty of bloggage, doing a couple of live chats and being all over the radio, as well.  I’ll also be far more on top of answering comments.

Speaking of which – rational, reasonable comments are always welcome!  Vote for Tom!

12:10 AM Eastern

Yes, folks, it’s that time again!  Starting at 10:00 AM Eastern on December 1st, voting is open to the public to help form the final ballot of the Ford C. Frick Award for Broadcasting Excellence.  The winner goes into the broadcasters’ wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.  Each year, I beseech you to cast your ballot for Tom Cheek, and I’m doing so again.

Please go to the Hall of Fame’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/baseballhall to vote – and please do it every day.

The top three vote-getters in the month-long balloting process are guaranteed a spot on the final ballot of 10 that is presented to the Frick committee, which votes in the winner who will be given his due in the same ceremony as the players voted in by the writers, the veterans committee honorees and the winner of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award, who goes into the writers’ wing of the Hall of Fame.

With your help, there could be a real Toronto flavour to this year’s ceremony, since Roberto Alomar is likely to be elected by the writers, and there’s a good chance that Bob Elliott of The Sun will win the Spink.

I don’t really need to make the case for Tom Cheek to win the Frick, but I’m going to anyway.  He was the original voice of the Blue Jays, not missing a day of work from Opening Day in the snow on April 7, 1977 until June of 2004, when he took a couple of days off to attend the funeral of his father.  A week later, he was diagnosed with the brain tumour that took his life about a year and a half later.  Tom broadcast 4,306 straight games over the course of his streak (and that’s regular-season only, lest you forget about all the spring training, playoff and all-star games) and in so doing became the voice not only of baseball in Canada, but the voice of summer as well.

His familiar booming baritone was unmistakeable and I know that for me, that first time I heard him every spring, he brought happiness and comfort, as well as excitement that a new baseball season was beginning.

We all know the great calls – from the first division championship in ’85 to Dave Stieb’s no-hitter, “Timlin to Carter” and, of course, “Touch ‘Em All, Joe”, but to so many of us Tom was much, much more than just a voice on the radio.  He was a real part of our lives, part of our families, part of what made us feel the most at home.

I’m trying not to get too sappy here, but it’s impossible for me not to.  Sorry about that.

I first had the honour of meeting Tom in 1988, when I was working for U of T radio and struck up a coversation in the Exhibition Stadium press box with the late Len Bramson who, unbeknownst to me,  was the man who not only hired Tom, but Jerry Howarth, too, and who was the architect of the original Blue Jays radio network.  Mr. Bramson asked if I would like to go into the broadcast booth after the game to meet Tom and Jerry and I jumped at the chance.

It was amazing, they were both gracious and happy to welcome me into their fraternity (such as it was for me), with none of us imagining (you can read that as dreaming on my end) that we would be working together 13 years later.

The first game I did as part of the crew with Tom and Jerry was Opening Day 2002 at Fenway Park.  An injured Chris Carpenter and an ineffective Pedro Martinez matched up in what turned out to be an ugly day for pitchers, with the Jays coming out on top 12-11.  I had to look up the score (I thought it was 13-12), because I only really remember a couple of things from that game.  The first was just before the first pitch, when Tom turned to me and said, very forcefully, that the microphones were always open.  That if I had something to contribute, to not be shy and go ahead and say it, that I was part of the team.  The second was in the ninth, when the Red Sox brought in Ugueth Urbina and I told the story of Urbina and his brothers, each of whom have the initials U.U.U. Tom liked it, and gave me a look that showed me he was impressed – which meant the world to me.

Looking back, it’s really too bad that what’s a great Day One On The Job With Two Legends story turns out to involve a guy who’s now in prison for pouring gasoline on a bunch of people who worked for him and also trying to hack them to death with a machete.  But I digress.

The more we worked together, the more I grew to admire Tom – his pre-game singing voice, his mischievous streak, his class, his kindness, his generosity.  He was an amazing human being.

I have only called one major-league home run in my broadcasting career, and it’s because  Tom refused to take the microphone back from me on the day he was honoured at the Dome back in 2005.  He insisted that I do the entire first inning, despite the fact that he arrived back in the booth in the top of the first after making his way up from the ceremony – over my strenuous objections both on the air and off – and Reed Johnson led off the bottom of the first with a home run.  I’m forever grateful to him for that. Tom, not Reed, but Reed too, I guess.

There’s no question that Tom was an all-time great broadcaster and that he’s deserving of the Frick Award.  The fact that he’s no longer with us isn’t a reason to cast your vote for him, the reason is that the acknowledgment of an incredible career is long, long overdue.

I’ve said before that it was shameful that Tom wasn’t given the award in ’05, when he could have enjoyed it – he’d have been thoroughly overwhelmed by the honour.  Heck, he didn’t even think he was worthy of his name being raised to the Blue Jays’ Level of Excellence at the Dome.  I was standing with him in the Blue Jays’ dugout when he noticed the tarp covering a piece of the Level on Tom Cheek Day and he realized what was under it.  He just kept shaking his head in a combination of disbelief, modesty and embarrassment.

It’s too late for that now, but certainly far from too late to get him the Frick that he so tremendously deserves.  It would be incredible to see his widow Shirley (just as wonderful a human being as her late husband, it must be noted) up on that podium in Cooperstown accepting the award on Tom’s behalf. Tom Cheek was an incredible broadcaster and an even better person.  He deserves this, and you can help.  Please vote for Tom every day throughout the month of December – he touched us all, and now we can return the favour.  Thank you so much.

And once Tom is in, we can get to work on Jerry!

Rational, reasonable comments are always welcome.  There are over 100 in the hopper waiting to be answered, and I’ll do so Tuesday morning – thanks also to those of you who made suggestions on what to do with my short time in San Francisco, what a great city!