Winter Meetings

College football Navy QB Dobbs invited to play in East-West Shrine Game Navy senior quarterback Ricky Dobbs has been invited to play in the East-West Shrine Game, which will take place at 4 p.m. Jan. 22 at the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Fla. The game will be televised on ESPN2. Dobbs joins Roger Staubach as the only Navy quarterbacks to be selected for the game and is just the 23rd Navy player overall to be picked for the longest-running college all-star game.

Laurel Park Track to host 15 stakes races during winter meeting The 2011 Laurel Park winter meeting will feature 15 stakes races, since the Maryland Jockey Club, the Maryland Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association and the Maryland Horse Breeders Association have agreed to a schedule. Headlining the program are a pair of Grade 2 $150,000 seven-furlong sprints on Presidents Day weekend: the Barbara Fritchie Handicap for fillies and mares Feb. 19 and the General George Handicap for males two days later.

When the Orioles' front office hunkers down in earnest Monday for several days of discussions, negotiations and deliberations at the annual winter meetings in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., there will be a decidedly different vibe. For the first time since 2002, the Orioles will have a veteran manager shaking the hands of any players or players' agents who come into the club's suite. For the first time in more than a decade, the Orioles can talk about their strong finish to the previous season and point to a young core of talented players as part of their sales pitch.

Orioles president of baseball operations Andy MacPhail headed home from the winter meetings Thursday with a veteran pitcher at the top of his rotation, plenty of options to fill other holes and one fewer prospect from his stable of young arms. In the major league phase of the Rule 5 draft Thursday, the San Francisco Giants selected right-hander Steve Johnson, 22, the local product who was acquired with Josh Bell from the Los Angeles Dodgers in the George Sherrill deal in July. Johnson, a St. Paul's graduate and son of former Orioles pitcher Dave Johnson, was 3-2 with a 2.84 ERA in seven starts for Double-A Bowie.

The Orioles downplayed the likelihood of making a significant deal at the winter meetings - and I suppose there are some people who are going to downplay the significance of the deal they made - but acquiring veteran starter Kevin Millwood was a pretty good way to kick off Andy MacPhail's winter upgrade program. No, he's not Roy Halladay, but he's a solid veteran who was a good influence on the young players in the Texas Rangers clubhouse last season, and he's the guy who is going to take the monkey off Jeremy Guthrie's back in 2010.

INDIANAPOLIS - - The Orioles are expected to take the next step in their wooing of free-agent pitcher and Cuban defector Aroldis Chapman next week when international scouting director John Stockstill travels to Houston to meet with the pitcher's agents, Alan and Randy Hendricks. Stockstill and Orioles president of baseball operations Andy MacPhail also met with the Hendricks brothers Tuesday, the second day of the winter meetings. It was the Orioles' first extensive opportunity to express their interest to the Hendricks brothers, who became Chapman's agents after the pitcher left Edwin Mejia last month.

Nobody cares about baseball anymore. That's why ESPN spent the entire day Tuesday doing incremental updates on the slow-developing three-team deal that will put - if you want to just hit the high notes - Curtis Granderson in the New York Yankees' outfield and Edwin Jackson in the Arizona Diamondbacks' rotation. I know, Granderson and Jackson are real good players, and the five other guys involved make it a very big deal, but it's not like any of them are dating Kate Hudson. Nobody cares about the Orioles anymore.

Baseball's winter meetings, which are just getting under way in Indianapolis, will never be what they once were. The days when Bill Veeck and Roland Hemond set up a table in the hotel lobby and put up a handwritten sign that said "Open for Business" are long gone. But this year's offseason convention has a chance to be more of a traditional tradefest than the usual free-agent free-for-all. Commissioner Bud Selig's announcement last month that some major league teams lost money this year seemed to signal another round of baseball belt-tightening, and there are rumblings that several budget-conscious teams are willing to part with their expensive players.

There is a contingent of Orioles executives headed this weekend for the winter meetings in Indianapolis, but I'm worried that Andy MacPhail and his staff have forgotten what baseball's annual offseason convention is really all about. They'll tell you it's an opportunity for representatives of the 30 major league teams to come together to transact various forms of league business and ramp up trade talks and free-agent negotiations. That's all true, but they know as well as you do that trade talks and contract negotiations can be conducted just as easily by conference call in this day and age, and the Rule 5 draft could be dispensed with on the Internet if that were really the point of the winter meetings.

Armed with an extensive list of needs and ample payroll flexibility, the Orioles' top decision-makers will descend on Indianapolis this week for baseball's annual winter meetings. They are looking to fill both corner infield spots, shore up the back end of the bullpen and add an accomplished innings-eater to their rotation. So far, the Orioles have been quiet, their transactions limited to routine roster maintenance and minor league signings. They could change that when executives from all 30 teams and representatives for the top free agents come together this week.