FROM LAS VEGAS — Here's what I learned or noticed while spending the day at the baseball meetings in the Bellagio.
* Joe Torre and Ned Colletti are staying at the Wynn instead of the Bellagio because they get free rooms. Under owners Frank & Jamie McCourt -- if not players, then rooms.
* Got a private audience with agent Scott Boras, the number of room service carts lined up in his 31st-floor suite suggesting someone is really going to pay to get Mark Teixeira.
* Boras talked to Colletti on Monday and told the Dodgers that Manny Ramirez is interested in playing for the team and suggested the Dodgers should look at the deal he put together for the Giants and Barry Bonds.
Bonds signed a five-year deal, the club having the option to void the fifth year if Bonds failed to hit certain minimum standards such as a number of at-bats over the first four years of the deal. This would allow the Dodgers to get out of the deal earlier if Ramirez pulled a Boston.
* Colletti said he talked to Boras and was told four other teams have expressed an interest in Ramirez. "That's good," Colletti said. "I wouldn't like to see a guy out of work." The comedian confirmed Boras told the Dodgers what he's looking for in the length of a contract but said no dollar figures were discussed.
* "Congratulations," said ESPN's Steve Phillips when running into Colletti. Why congratulations? "Because he signed Casey Blake," said Phillips, the former GM of the Mets, and now you know why.
* A reporter for MLB.com asked Colletti if the team had checked out Blake's sore arm. He said Blake had seen a doctor. "The same one who looked at Jason Schmidt?" he was asked.
"No, a different one," he said in offering Dodgers fans some hope.
* The report Monday night was the Dodgers had come to terms with Mark Loretta, so now you know why I hopped a 6:15 a.m. flight out of Ontario to get here as fast as I could. The missing piece to the World Series puzzle!
* Colletti just said the deal with Loretta is not complete. I wonder if people had already started lining up at the Dodgers' ticket office after reading reports that he was already a Dodger?
* If the McCourts are all about image, do they get the public bang for their buck by bringing CC Sabathia to town where he'll pitch maybe 15 games at Dodger Stadium, the remainder on the road? Or do they get it with Ramirez in the lineup every day? Did I mention I was in Boras' suite and listening to what he thinks might take place?
