Is there anything more captivating, anything in sport that offers more sheer excitement than baseball's winter meetings? I think not!

Do you know that the Royals are fishing for a left-handed utility player? Well, the wags down at Dallas (where the meetings were held this year) know! And the fans back in Kansas City could not possibly be more riveted. They are literally queuing up outside the department-store window displays -- even when it's snowing -- hands deep in their pockets, watching the TV sets through the glass to catch the latest news headlines. (Because that's how all news is gathered, right Hollywood?)

A quizzical woman passes by, clutching her handbag and adjusting her hatpin.

"Say," she says. "Did the Royals sign Jose Batista yet?"

The man tips the lid of his fedora and pulls the pipe out of his mouth, temporarily averting his gaze from the television sets.

"Say," responds the man. "Not yet -- but they may have made a swell offer to Jerry Hairston!"

"Say!" she replies. "That is swell!"

"Say!" he yells back, wild eyed, whipped into that jungle-like frenzy that the winter meetings bring out in all of us. Because whenever a general manager holds a press conference and says, "We're here to try and improve the ball club," it speaks to an ancient, some would say, primal urge to just light fires and dance. And that, of course, is exactly what all of those folks in front of the department store proceed to do (except for the lighting fire part -- I mean, come on, let's not go too far here).

They start off with a little two-step, then they kind of shake their hands in a hand-jive-meets-Michael-Jackson sort of way, before stomping their feet, doing a complete turn before tossing their heads back, throwing their hands in the air, simultaneously dropping to their knees and yelling out: "Bautista!"

This ritual is repeated all over the country. In Tampa Bay, they shoot off cannons usually reserved for the annual Gasparilla pirate festival whenever an agent drops a hint that a player might be interested in signing a long-term deal to play for the Rays. (And don't even ask what they'd do if he's a left-handed reliever, because, oh boy! Look out! Are those real?)

And who'd have thought that the Yankees are looking to add pitching? And that the Sox are looking for a bat? I mean, these are the sort of things that can be uncovered only at the winter meetings, that wonderous three-day span which is, apparently, the only time baseball executives, managers, agents, Andrei Gromyko and Henry Kissinger can get together in the same room and communicate with one another.

Viva Bautista!