The baseball Winter Meetings were held this week. Not ironically, but rather fittingly, they took place within shouting distance of Disney World in Orlando.

Having covered these Winter Meetings more times than I care to remember, I can assure you they were properly located. Everybody shows up hoping to be Cinderella. For the most part they wind up Goofy. For some, deal-making during this week is more Fantasy Land than Tomorrow Land. And for others it showcases just what a Mickey Mouse organization they truly are.

More than anything else, this week is composed of endless hours of glad-handing through clenched tooth smiles, and enough empty promises of staying in touch to fill a calendar. One that will be appropriately discarded sometime prior to boarding the flight home.

In the interest of convincing you to scratch the Winter Meetings off your bucket list, I can give you a primer on what you can expect if you spend your money to attend this annual bash.

The most important location of the week, bar none, is the lobby.

Generally speaking, baseball’s annual meetings are held in a hotel so large that the lobby crosses county lines.

There was a time when general managers held forth in every corner of the lobby with the idea that one of their peers might happen by with an enticing offer of a martini, or three, and they can sit (or stand) amongst their peers and talk frankly about how their field manager is ruining any chance they might have of making it to the World Series this year.

Once in a while the thought of trading one of their cherished players for one of the other guy’s cherished players as the final piece of the puzzle that creates title contenders is discussed. Those discussions end with a similar outcome as many other three martini liaisons. “Why don’t you come up to my room and we’ll talk about it.”

These days, you can find nary a general manager roaming the lobby looking for one of his own breed and hoping to steal a star player for the baloney sandwich they are offering in return.

The reason for that is that while GM’s would like nothing more than to schmooze with other GM’s, the lobby is now a minefield loaded with every college student who ever took a Communications course. They lurk in every corner just waiting to pounce on the unsuspecting GM, resume in hand and blind ambition oozing from every pore.

Then there are busloads full of fans who are intent on informing their hometown GM which free agents he should sign. There is the obligatory squadron of 12-year-olds, baseball and pen in hand, and every agent from Scott Boras to James Bond, busily spreading the rumor that their guy is in serious talks with whatever team it is you root for. All of the above has provided sufficient reason why GM’s are now sequestered in their team suite and have room service deliver their peers to them.

It’s kind of like it was before, except now you don’t get the martini until you came up to the room.

So kids, here’s a little secret I will confidentially pass on to you just a few years after the fact. Shhhh! You can’t tell anyone.

I’ve been in that room. It isn’t pretty.

I was doing a weekly baseball show called ‘Race For the Pennant’ on HBO, and my producer came up with a coup. He had convinced a major league team to allow our crew into their suite for the run of the Winter Meetings. We could shoot every discussion with every team that entered, and be privy to the table full of scouts who’s job it was to find the diamond in the rough that the team just had to get. There were assorted hangers-on too. Like the PR guy, the field manager, the numbers crunchers, and of course the most important person in the room: The Bartender.

There were only a couple things missing. Compassion and honesty.

The scouts who manned the dining room table were all roughly 147 years old. They had seen every player in the league so many times they knew their mother’s maiden name. None of them thought that anyone playing today was as good as Rabbit Maranville, the spunky Hall of Fame shortstop who last wore a glove in 1934. They were unanimous in their dislike for every player whose name was even remotely mentioned as a possible trade target.

And, as much as the scouts hated every player, they were usurped by the numbers crunchers’ hate for them. Here was a squadron of suits who didn’t know a line drive from a resin bag, but who were the proud owners of a Harvard MBA.

What they did know was BABIPs (batting average on balls in play); UZRs (ultimate zone rating), and ISOs (isolated power numbers); while the only letters their grizzled counterparts knew beyond RBIs, HRs and ERA, were VSOP, B&B, and IPA.

For me, that week spent in the suite with the baseball geniuses yielded lots of memories and no trades.

Group after group of baseball poobahs came to the suite, did a round of backslapping, sipped an adult beverage and left with a promise to have the family over for dinner when next “You’re in our town.”

The door closed, followed by a hearty round of “I’d rather do business with Enron,” and big guffaws about everything from his choice of ties to his phony smile (they’d say sporting a phony smile).

So don’t blame Buster Posey for coming back from Orlando empty handed. It’s just not a place to do business. He’s the new kid and doesn’t seem to be the back-slapping, phony-smile sort.

What he appears to be is a risk taker. A guy who swings big and isn’t afraid to take a strike or two.

I think he’s also a guy who might trade a Harvard MBA or two for a grizzled old guy who’s seen it all.

Barry Tompkins is a 40-year network television sportscaster and a San Francisco native. Email him at barrytompkins1@gmail.com.