Mellinger Minutes: KC sports on hold and minds, what better way to shelter in place?
Couldn’t sleep. This was the other night, can’t remember which. Might’ve been Friday. Or Saturday. Thursday? Does it matter? They’re all the same now.
The moods are like a yo-yo. I know I’m not alone in that, even if public discourse seems split between freakouts and jokes. Parts of my days are spent near each extreme. Sometimes, parts of 5 minutes are spent near each extreme.
I’m saying this out loud here because you might be feeling the same. That’s OK. That’s honest. We can say it, admit it.
The phone said 4:14 a.m. when I looked. I was fairly sure right then that I wouldn’t get back to sleep. I scrolled through Twitter, read a few pieces that made me wonder if normal life will ever return. Then I went to Instagram, and saw a bunch of pictures that made me feel like we were in this together.
The mind races, and often without you saying “go.” Our kids have been great. They’re young enough to not understand what’s happening. That’s good, mostly. It also brings some challenges.
Our kindergartner wants to see his friends, many of whom live within a few houses from ours, and he doesn’t totally get why he can’t. He’s bummed his baseball and soccer teams aren’t playing. But he’s also the type to turn an empty laundry basket into a 45-minute game with his younger brother.
We have a good life, is part of what I’m trying to say here. Relatively speaking, we have nothing to complain about. My heart aches for restaurant workers and musicians and small business owners and everyone else whose livelihood depends in some way on crowds.
I’m thinking constantly of everyone in healthcare, from doctors to administrators to nurses to clerical workers. War analogies are cliche, but fit here. They’re on the front line.
I’m devastated for anyone with a friend of loved one affected by the novel coronavirus, including and especially the Johnson County grandmother who now must plan her husband’s funeral in isolation. I’d feel that way even without a friend in the family.
Again, my life is good. Times like this force us all to appreciate the good stuff more. That’s true even for those of us who try to make gratitude a habit. But it’s hard not to wonder how quickly and how personal the impacts are going to be for all of us. That’s where my mind started going at 4:14 the other morning.
At some point, I did finally get back to sleep. I remember the birds chirping before I drifted off, so it must’ve been around 6:30 or so. Our son woke me up. He walked down the hall, opened our door, climbed into bed and let me wrap my arms and legs around him.
I felt completely at peace in that moment, and for most of that day.
The moods do what they want, and all we can do is enjoy the good and remember the bad won’t last.
This week’s eating recommendation — and it might be like this for a while — is literally any locally owned restaurant that’s doing curbside carryout. It’s a weird thing to say that getting in your car to buy dinner to bring back home is a way to help, but it’s true. Those places need us.
The reading recommendation is Kevin Armstrong on the former Wake Forest basketball coach who killed a man.
Please give me a follow on Twitter and Facebook and, as always, thanks for your help and thanks for reading.
A special thanks, too, for everyone who wrote in about how they’re dealing with all of this. The responses have informed some of what I’ve written already, and are front-of-mind as I think of what to write going forward.
Please keep them coming. I want to know if you have a loved one you can’t see, if you had to cancel a wedding, or if you’re reading a book you’ve put off or getting to know your family in new ways.
My email is smellinger@kcstar.com, you can always reach me through Facebook, and my Twitter DMs are open.
OK, here’s the show.
Brilliant reader* LCS sent this handy** guide to toilet paper inventory and it looks like the Mellingers are good for 21 days or so.
* Shoutout Posnanski.
** Woof, poor word choice there.
True story: even before the hoarding began I thought we could’ve used a pack. I was at Costco and just forgot. Probably got distracted by the frozen aisles. Anyway, I’ve been at a grocery store maybe three or four times since then and have seen a combined total of zero rolls.
I assume they’ll come back, eventually?
We’re all guessing our way through this and while toilet paper wouldn’t crack my own top 100 list of items to hoard I recognize that we all behave and think differently. My wife, for instance, is of the clearly wrong opinion that I have too much bourbon.
I also understand that one man’s hoarding is another man’s two week supply so that he doesn’t have to keep going to the store. And that’s fair.
But I guess more than anything else the point here is that part of what can get us through here is extending an extra degree of grace to each other. We’re all going to have dark moments. We’re all going to have happy moments.
This is a shared experience, even at a mandated social distance.
I wrote some about this recently but the biggest thing I’m missing is that moment just before the game starts. It’s that moment when there’s nothing left to do but play, but the game is still a minute or two away, and everyone in the building — fans, athletes, coaches, media, vendors, everyone — fills with the same anticipation.
Few events in sports offer that moment in such purity as the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
I hate that we don’t have that.
I miss coaches screaming themselves red. I miss the deep breath before a free throw. I miss CBS’ music in and out of commercials. I miss the bands, the shoes squeaking on the floor, the microphone that needs to be adjusted because it’s making every miss on the rim sound like a freight train.
I miss the bench players jumping and holding each other back and swaying with their arms locked. I miss the annual transition from rooting for my bracket to accepting my bracket as trash and just enjoying the whole thing with a clear mind.
I miss the media room snack mix (it’s sweet and spicy and amazing) and I miss seeing friends and I miss rolling my eyes at the NCAA suits insisting on saying student-athletes and I even miss the security guard at the end of the tunnel making sure that only NCAA-approved cups are taken courtside.
I miss all of that and more, and that’s just from the basketball tournament.
I’m going to miss the sound of 5,000 separate but simultaneous conversations at a ballpark. I’m going to miss the sound of a fastball popping the mitt and the sight of a perfectly thrown changeup that has the hitter out in front. I’m going to miss the hand signals back to the dugout after a base hit and the glove high fives after a double play and the dead grass outside the on-deck circle in the shape of Alex Gordon’s spikes.
I’m going to miss the jokes about the Astros and the highlights of Mike Trout and Adalberto Mondesi going first to third. I’m going to miss Ryan and Rex when the Royals are out of town and all the friends I’ve made at the ballpark when they’re in town.
I’m going to miss the weird dynamic of a clubhouse, and trying to guess who can speak toward the weird idea in my head and when they might be available.
I’m going to miss all of that and more and that’s just from baseball.
I’ll miss our kindergartner’s failed attempts to stop smiling after he hits a baseball. I’ll miss watching him be one of the few to take defense seriously, especially when he gets his preferred spot near third base.
I’ll miss our preschooler’s first time on a team. We signed him up for tee-ball and soccer, and I have no idea how either would’ve gone. I could see him being the most aggressive kid on the field and I could see him spending the whole time playing with dirt. Either way, it would’ve been fun.
Mostly, though, I’ll miss the way sports connect us. I’ll miss talking to my soccer friends about how well Alan Pulido is playing or whether Mikel Arteta is the answer for Arsenal. I’ll miss the text threads full of highlights from the night before. I’m still waiting for the day when I don’t reflexively wonder who’s playing tonight, only to be disappointed with reality.
I’ll miss it all, but I also come back to this admittedly strange thought: whenever this is over, and no matter what the other side looks like, we’re all going to remember what we did in these days.
I want to remember that I made the most of it, both with being socially responsible and making the most of the extra time with family.
The world is moving faster than a jet, it can feel hard to keep up with, and so it’s interesting that a similar question was asked last week. My answer, generally, was that the long-term changes would be small.
I don’t know that I still believe that.
I can imagine a world in which the other side of this includes a general renewed appreciation for sports, that the simple pleasure of going to the ballpark with a friend and enjoying a few hours is appreciated in a new way.
But that also depends on the virus being squashed, and the more that comes out the less likely that seems. I don’t mean that we’ll be on shelter-at-home for 18 months or whatever, but with a vaccine reportedly a year out at least it’s hard to know what the general sentiment will be in a month or three.
Which means it’s also easy to imagine a world in which games are going on and appreciated fully on television but played in front of sparse crowds as people remain hesitant on gathering in big groups.
I do think that the same way the September 11 attacks left a different sense of patriotism and safety, and the same way the 2008 housing crisis left a different sense of financial security, this pandemic will leave a different sense of personal hygiene and crowds.
What I mean by that is it’s going to change small things like how contractors like Aramark prepare, store and serve food and, more importantly, how fans feel about consuming that food. It’s easy to see hand sanitizing stations at the top of every aisle, for instance.
The temptation is to say — and believe — that things will be normal-ish on the other side, but at the moment it’s hard to imagine anything will be exactly the same.
So, I don’t know.
But I’m excited as hell to see it.
This is actually one part of life that the virus has made clearer for me. I’ve struggled with the answer to this question as long as I can remember.
I know some people believe a tip is for the server, so if the entirety of service is handing you a plastic bag that’s not worth much.
I know some people believe a tip is a necessary part of the restaurant industry, because the people producing the food aren’t paid a living wage. So in that way, the tip isn’t for the specific service you’ve been given but to supplement the larger operation.
I usually ended up splitting the middle, and leaving around 15 percent instead of the 20-25 it would be if we ate in.
Anyway, at this point, those tips are absolutely a way to help the operation continue. Restaurants are laying people off, or shrinking hours, and every dollar is more precious than ever.
An obvious disclaimer: restaurant workers are hurting, but you might be hurting the same or worse. You shouldn’t feel forced to spend money you can’t afford.
But the other night, when I went to pickup sushi, I stood over the check for an extra moment to consider this exact question.
I ended up calculating what I’d have tipped if we ate in, and then added $10. It felt like the right thing to do.
For your second question, look, the same way nobody should tell you how to be a fan, nobody should tell you how drink your beer.
Right now my garage fridge has everything from Bourbon County to Banquet, from Tank 7 to KCBC Pils, from Prairie Bomb to Alpha Pale.
There are no wrong answers here, is what I’m saying.
Some of the smartest stuff I’ve seen on this is from a Chiefs fan named Nait Jones, who I’ve come to know a little and respect a lot through Twitter*.
* The world works in strange ways sometimes.
I don’t know how much of this is Nait’s original idea or whether he’s riffing on something he’s seen somewhere else or what, but he was the first I saw to suggest small minority stakes in teams for Hall of Fame players.
The idea would be to honor their work in building the league, and giving them a (small) voice in the hiring process.
There are other interesting ideas. A coaching school for former players. More social and personal connection between (virtually all white) owners and (mostly) black players.
What I like the most about Nait’s ideas is that they shun quotas. He calls them “lazy,” and I’d add often counterproductive. Football is a people business. It’s based on relationships.
I don’t believe owners are racist, or in any way purposely skewing the demographics of head coaches. They’re competitive people. For the most part, they want to win.
But people often hire people they know. If there’s a way to create more and deeper relationships between black assistants and owners I think we’d see coaches start to look more like their rosters with the (presumed) benefit that coaching would improve as the realistic pool of candidates is widened.
Worth a try, anyway.
Oh, man. Candidates? A lot. Let’s do this in groups.
I believe the locks are Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, Tyreek Hill, Mitchell Schwartz and Dustin Colquitt. It’s hard to imagine any of them not making it.
There are no defensive players on that list, but that’s more a function of circumstance. Chris Jones is probably the closest thing to a lock, and hell, maybe he is a lock. But if he is traded or this contract situation turns ugly you never know. The Ring of Honor has had elements of politics before.
You can make an argument that one season is all it took for Tyrann Mathieu to earn a spot, but he’ll need to at least play here longer. Same with Frank Clark.
I’ve always been bullish on Charvarius Ward, and expect him to play his way into the conversation. But he’s not there yet. Juan Thornhill is full of potential.
The others with at least a chance include Mecole Hardman, Damien Williams, Sammy Watkins (if he stays and plays well his postseason moments are going to add up) and Harrison Butker.
But each of those guys would need a lot more longevity.
Also, you asked about players, but Andy Reid will obviously be up there. Brett Veach could, too.
I love this kind of thing.
I have no idea what the answer is, and I’m not sure a GM would put enough thought into something with no chance of becoming a reality but I will say this:
If the Chiefs received a team’s entire next draft plus five more years of first round picks I would genuinely believe it was not enough.
I try to stay away from fully declarative statements when I don’t feel it fully because the alternative is sliding into a world of take-ery, and that’s not what I want to be. But I feel this one fully:
I’ll be shocked if Bill O’Brien is still employed with the Texans for the 2021 season.
I don’t mean that I’ll be shocked if the Texans don’t hire a full-time GM to help with personnel. I mean I’ll be shocked if O’Brien is the head coach for the Texans beyond the upcoming season.
This is not a dump on his coaching chops, either. He coached a team that started Brian Hoyer, Ryan Mallett, T.J. Yates and Brandon Weeden at quarterback into the playoffs. I believe that Bill O’Brien is a good NFL coach.
It’s just hard to see how this thing is sustainable.
Trying to be both the coach and GM is a terrible idea for everyone except Bill Belichick, and there are too many coaches who think they’re Bill Belichick.
One of the many reasons Andy Reid has enjoyed so much success in Kansas City is that he’s the coach and lets others lead on personnel. He’s talked about this occasionally, but the end in Philadelphia began as he took on more and more personnel responsibility.
He learned from that mistake. He seems to have right of refusal and approval on all decisions here, but he’s smart enough and egoless enough to let Brett Veach and those who work for him lead on personnel.
So, that’s part of the problem.
But another part is that he’s starting to grow the wrong kind of reputation. Michael Irvin said on ESPN that DeAndre Hopkins told him O’Brien compared him to Aaron Hernandez, and that Hopkins should keep the mothers of his children away more.
My assumption is that players on the team already had opinions about O’Brien after he refused to go for a fourth-and-1 and then on the next possession faked a punt. My assumption now is that those opinions are only hardening.
I’m not in that locker room, obviously, and can’t say any of this with certainty. But when a coach disrespecting a player like that goes public — especially a respected superstar like Hopkins — it can be hard to walk back without a ton of success.
And O’Brien was already dealing with suspicions that he’s wasting the significant talents of Deshaun Watson.
It’s just hard to see this ending well for O’Brien.
I believe with all my heart that Kentucky’s 1996 team is the greatest college basketball team of my lifetime. That team went 34-2. One of those losses came in November, to UMass, which Kentucky beat in the Final Four.
The other loss came in the final of the SEC tournament, and at the moment I can’t remember how much Kentucky’s starters played that day.
Anyway, that team beat opponents by an average of 22 points and had nine NBA players. The image of Tony Delk throwing an ally-oop to Antoine Walker and then Walter McCarty setting up as the front man on the press is hard to forget.
But if I’m reading your question correctly you’re asking if that was the most talented Final Four I can remember. And the answer is unquestionably yes.
That’s still the only time all four No. 1 seeds made it through. That Kansas team went 37-3, with seven NBA players. Sherron Collins came off the dang bench. Cole Aldrich hardly played.
KU’s semifinal against North Carolina was an impossibly hyped game that lived up to it. UNC was 36-3 that year, and Tyler Hansbrough was the national player of the year.
Memphis was 38-2, and Derrick Rose was the deserved No. 1 pick in the draft, with Chris Douglas-Roberts also going in the lottery.
UCLA was the worst of the four teams and it went 35-4 with Kevin Love, Russell Westbrook and Darren Collison. I mean, my goodness. That’s just silly.
So, anyway, yes. Most loaded Final Four of my lifetime, I do believe.
Sam McDowell replied to this tweet by saying the “best part of this job are the people I work with.” I am in complete agreement.
We’d do the shows no matter what, because that’s part of the job, but I think you can tell if the interaction isn’t genuine. We’re not good enough at faking it, and you’re not gullible enough to fall for it.
It starts professionally. It has to. I have maximum respect for these guys. Vahe and Blair are, no joke, among the five nicest people I know. They each know more about this business than I ever will, and are beyond generous with their time and help. Herbie has a world view I’d like to get closer to, and approaches his job with a seemingly unending level of energy and joy. Sam McDowell is as good as anyone I’ve worked with on writing about people, which is basically the entire job.
Other than the times of shelter-in-place, these jobs mean you end up spending as much time with your coworkers as you do your family. At times, it’s more. We lived together for eight days for the Super Bowl.
That’s going to go one of two ways, is the point.
I’m grateful that it’s gone the way it has with us, and I’m proud to call each of those guys a teammate.
A list? A list!
My list is going to be skewed toward younger kids, and boys, but here goes:
10. Bikes. This is sort of the last stand for social distancing. We went to the park the other day. The kids had their bikes and, first of all, they love ‘em. It’s a sense of freedom for them, I think, and of being a big kid. It’s also sort of social distancing by default.
9. Dance party. Self explanatory. And would be higher on the list but our kindergartner always ends up begging for Hell and Back, and our preschooler just wants “the Cars 2 song.”
8. Catch. There are infinite ways to do this. I’m hoping as the weather warms up the kindergartner will play some old school, Field of Dreams-type catch in the backyard. Last night, we ended up with dueling games of catch — the kindergartner was throwing the football, and the preschooler was throwing his favorite stuffed animal.
7. Chase. Our house is laid in a way that has a loop — from the kitchen through the breakfast room then to the office and living room and dining room and back to the kitchen. Sometimes they chase each other, sometimes they want you to chase them. Whatever gets them tired.
6. Monopoly Jr. This was a recent birthday present for the kindergartner, and I’m cheating here a little because I still haven’t played. My wife has a couple times and said it’s the best game she’s done with them. Hoping to get a round in this afternoon. But they’re both into board or card games — Uno (attack), Guess Who, Old Maid. You know, the classics.
5. Baseball or football cards. I guess isn’t really a game, but man I love watching them open a pack. I try to have a story about at least one player in every pack. The kindergartner is especially into it and when his face lights up opening a pack, then races to put them in his book, in that moment he could probably ask me to buy him an actual Corvette and I would say yes.
4. Monster trucks. My wife is an interior designer, and one day the kids grabbed some tile samples she had laying around. They laid the tiles onto an ottoman to sort of recreate the big dirt mound in the middle of a Monster Jam show. I’m telling you, man. Hours of entertainment.
3. Tecmo Bowl. I’m cheating a bit again because the Nintendo is scheduled to arrive tomorrow. But I cannot wait. We’re going to play some Tecmo, Punch Out, RC Pro Arm, Excitebike, Super Mario Bros., man. If I don’t write anything for like a week after Wednesday I hope we can all pretend this paragraph never existed.
2. Basketball. Another one that will be better when the weather warms. I missed the kindergartner’s last basketball game but my wife took video of him hitting a buzzer-beater (I think they lost by eleventy points) and I’ve watched it dozens of times. I probably spent more of my childhood shooting baskets by myself in the driveway than I spent doing any other single activity. Being on the other side of that now is amazing.
1. Baseball. I know I’m a cliche but I refuse to believe there’s much of anything you can do as a dad better than throwing your kid BP.
I’m up for suggestions!
We went through the third season of True Detective pretty quickly — better than season two, not as good as season one. Succession. Plot Against America. Ozark starts back up this week, pumped about that. ESPN’s 10-part Bulls series can’t get here fast enough.
I’ve heard great things about Tiger King. Hope to start that up tonight.
But, really, I’m open for suggestions. Love true crime stuff, or drama series like Succession or Billions.
It’s a strange thing, because at least personally it’s not like we have more time for TV. I’m obviously working as much or even more than usual. My wife has work. We have kids.
So maybe it’s more about the lack of sports right now, and the need to disconnect a bit, but it does seem like finding the right shows is more important.
Help me, you guys.
I don’t know how to make sense of the news business in normal times, let alone these times.
My personal opinion has long been that digital subscriptions are the way forward. I’ve been thrilled to see The Athletic put that to use and grow, and papers like the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times do the same.
The Star has put an increased emphasis on digital subscriptions the last few years, and I don’t know the exact numbers but the bosses seem to be encouraged. Digital advertising is a model broken beyond recognition or utility. Subscriptions will be the lifeblood going forward.
I know you said “other than the digital subscriptions” but I’m saying all of this to emphasize the point. The most important thing anyone can do is buy a digital subscription, and whatever is the second most important thing is pretty far down the list.
If you value independent journalism that is embedded in a community and willing to hold the powerful accountable there is no better way to spend $50 — for a year! — than with a digital subscription to your local newspaper. If all you want is sports the cost is even lower — just $30 for the Sports Pass.
But, yeah, other than that sharing a story you think someone might be interested in is great for us. Word of mouth. It’s easy to disparage “the media” but sometimes I wonder if that word has been mangled beyond recognition. The more people who share our work and talk about the mission positively the better for us.
Newspapers have always been great at telling people’s stories, and they’ve always been just as terrible at telling their own. That’s part of the problem, too, I think, and we need help from any reader who values what we do to tell a friend.
Also, as always, I understand that it’s up to us to be worth all of this first. Then it’s on the audience to respond. But we have to do our part or else none of this matters. Thanks for asking, too.
Yeah, it’s a rough time for a lot of folks and you’re obviously in that category. I’m sorry, man. Quite literally can’t imagine being a college graduate this spring. I felt the same way during the housing crisis. It’s all a bunch of unknowns.
I say this no matter the times, but it’s worth emphasizing now: I don’t think you can make it in this business if it’s not something you have to do.
What I mean by that is if you want to do this because you like sports, and like writing, and that’s as far as it goes you’re going to be driven out by a lot of headaches and obstacles that you can’t see from here.
But if you want to do it because you cannot imagine doing anything else, because you feel driven to do this work in a way that feels almost spiritual, then hell yeah come on board.
If you’re in that camp the advice I have now isn’t far from the advice I’d have during normal times. You have to continue the work. Sports have stopped, but that doesn’t mean your writing stops.
Go back and read something you wrote two months ago, or six, or 12. You’ll have fresh eyes now. Remember the decisions you made in generating the idea, then reporting, then writing. Think about what worked, and what didn’t. Think of what you’d do differently now.
Take a handful of stories from a handful of writers around the country you respect and do the same exercise. Read once like a normal reader, then again as a student of the game. Think about how the idea came about, and what the reporting and writing process might’ve entailed. Think about what worked, and what didn’t. Think of what you’d do that the writer didn’t, and what the writer did that you wouldn’t.
I’m mentioning this last but it’s probably the most important. Keep writing. If you have something in the notebook that you hadn’t had time to write, do it now. And do it even if it won’t publish. Keep writing. Find an old game and watch it if you have to. But you need to keep your fingers moving, and those pistons in your brain firing.
You can also network a bit, if you’re not already. Blogs exist around every team, and many of them are happy to hear pitches.
I don’t know what the hiring prospects are right now but there’s always work to be done. Again, I’m sorry about the timing. That sucks. There’s nothing you or I can do to change that.
But you are in charge of how you handle it.
This week, I’m particularly grateful for what seems like a general understanding that we’re all in this together. I know there are stories you can find about people being jerks to retail workers, and maybe I’ve just been lucky, but my experience has been that people are being more present and kind to each other. I hope that’s been your experience, too. It’s the only way we’re going to get to the other side of this in a good space.