Mellinger Minutes: Chiefs draft, will NFL kick off on time, a Yordano what-if and more
One of the few writing lessons from college that stuck is that professional journalists should never begin a story with an exclamation point — but screw that, let’s talk about sports!
The 2020 Chiefs are tantalizingly close to pulling off their ultimate goal, which has always been to essentially be the 2019 Chiefs again.
Frank Clark and Sammy Watkins agreed to new or altered contracts. Chris Jones is on the franchise tag. They have enough money to sign their draft picks, if little else, and have at least some cap space metaphorically hidden under rocks if the need arises.
They continue to work on what would be a monstrous contract extension for quarterback Patrick Mahomes.
So far, their most significant departure is cornerback Kendall Fuller. He became a bit of a forgotten man during the 2019 season, when he was injured and passed on the depth chart by Charvarius Ward and Bashaud Breeland. He switched positions, from corner to safety, and that was even before Juan Thornhill’s injury.
Breeland may yet follow him out. At the beginning of free agency I would’ve thought there was no chance he’d return. But the market for him apparently didn’t materialize, and every day that passes it might be a little more likely he returns.
That’s a lot of unknowns, except here’s something we can be fairly sure of: No matter what happens with Breeland (and it’s still much likelier he’s gone than returns), the Chiefs will and should be looking hard at a defensive back with their first-round draft pick.
Preferably, that man would play corner.
Depending on the mock draft, Auburn’s Noah Igbinoghene, Utah’s Jaylon Johnson, or TCU’s Jeff Gladney could be available for the Chiefs at No. 32 overall.
This is the second year in a row the Chiefs have targeted a corner early. It’s interesting that the same way the draft broke in a way that didn’t make sense for the Chiefs to reach on a corner last year, it’s generally projected to break in a way that would provide value at the position where the Chiefs will be drafting.
The truth is that even if Breeland is back the Chiefs’ biggest need still might be corner. Ward had a breakout season, but after him the only other corners on contract for 2020 are Rashad Fenton (15 percent of defensive snaps last year) and Alex Brown (nine total).
The Chiefs might be able to sign a veteran on a prove-it deal — the way they’ve done with Breeland, Morris Claiborne and a few others in the past — but with their cap situation the best available talent at that position will be in the draft.
They have the advantage, of course, of a terrific roster. After corner, the next biggest need is probably linebacker, particularly one with some coverage ability. But they showed they can manage that OK. They could also use another safety, a running back and some depth on the offensive line (particularly inside), but at this point we’re on high-level critiques.
Of course, a lot of this plan — and the cap space to pull it off — could change if the Chiefs get to a place where trading Jones makes more sense.
I’ve long felt that’s where this ends, but I also know both sides would like to work out a long-term deal.
That’s a lot to digest. We have time.
This week’s reading recommendation is The World Is Changing — So Can We, by David Byrne and (it’s going to be like this for a while so please get used to it) the eating recommendation is any locally owned restaurant that you can afford to get takeout from and tip like you’re eating in.
Please give me a follow on Twitter and Facebook and, as always, thanks for your help and thanks for reading.
I hope you’ve listened to the first two episodes of Mellinger Minutes For Your Ears — a new podcast built around your questions and, most weeks, a conversation with someone I think you’ll be interested in.
So far we’ve had Royals manager/carpenter Mike Matheny and Kansas basketball coach Bill Self. This week, when he’d otherwise be at the Masters, Gary Woodland will be our guest.
If you’d like to participate, please call 816-234-4365. Leave your first name, where you’re calling from and a question. The feedback so far has been great, and thank you to everyone who’s listening. Hopefully we can keep it up.
Also: I continue to be grateful to all of you have reached out with stories and information about how you’re dealing with all of this. You’ve informed some of what I’ve written, and guided some of what I’m reporting and thinking about going forward. Please keep them coming — the good, the ugly, the beautiful, the funny, all of it.
My email is smellinger@kcstar.com and you can always reach me through Facebook and Twitter, where the DMs are open.
OK, here’s the show.
Love it.
The Royals are 4-5 going into tonight’s game against the Tigers. Adalberto Mondesi was healthy by opening day but still chasing too many pitches outside the zone. He also remains visibly uncomfortable in cold weather, which made for a rough opening road trip.
He’s batting .243 with three triples, four stolen bases, and you should’ve seen the diving play he made up the middle on Sunday afternoon. It was a beautiful day.
The Royals’ overwhelming confidence in Ryan O’Hearn looks well placed so far. He’s homered three times already, though he only has one hit in nine at-bats against left-handed pitching.
Salvador Perez looks healthy, but he’s only caught five of the nine games so far. He DH’d and played first in the others and secretly the coaches are coming up with a group strategy on how to tell him when he’s out of the lineup.
Bubba Starling made the roster but has only played twice. He’s 2-for-9, both singles, but he’s hit the ball hard.
Greg Holland looks great. His velocity isn’t quite what it was, but it’s enough. He’s only given up one run with six strikeouts in four innings. Josh Staumont has pitched better than his results indicate — five strikeouts, four walks and three runs (all on one homer, after two of those walks) in four innings.
The biggest question is the rotation. They’re holding up fine enough for now. Mike Montgomery had one bad start, but other than that nobody’s given up more than four runs (or gone deeper than six innings).
This remains a major concern within the coaching staff, though, because they’ve had three off days already and today is the fourth of 12 games in 12 days. The depth is thin, and without a lot of guys going deep in games the wear of the season will add up.
The 2018 draft class looks good, but the Royals don’t want to rush them.
You guys, I enjoyed writing that. I really did. Thank you.
Too Big To Cancel?
I hope you’re right. Not about the political pressures, I should say, but about the NFL playing its schedule on time. I desperately hope you’re right. Personally and, let’s just be honest here, professionally.
But I’m just not sure I’m with you.
Please let me be clear about two things: Nobody can be sure what the world will look like in five months, and I’m not here pretending to be an expert.
I wrote about some of this in the column the other day, but I’m just not sure how we get where we need to be for games to be played in the time we have before the NFL season would start in 156 days (presumably at Arrowhead Stadium).
Does it feel like we’re five months from being able to gather 70,000 strong inside a stadium?
You can say the games can be played without fans, and most of us would see that as a suitable solution in theory, but what about the logistics?
Japan’s baseball league is an unfortunate example of both the danger in starting too soon and the obstacles in place to play. They were playing the equivalent of spring training games in empty stadiums, with precautions ranging from daily screenings of everyone who went into the stadium to encouraging distancing to at least one team operating in a functional quarantine.
That lasted just five days before the first positive test result, and once that happens the whole thing has to be shut down.
Ken Rosenthal wrote recently that MLB is looking into playing at empty spring training ballparks. The story was typically well reported and thought out and made two points overwhelmingly clear:
First, MLB is willing to do just about anything to salvage some form of a 2020 season.
Second, the league does not yet have a solution without significant challenges.
The NFL has some benefit of time here. Even if the baseball season was extended into November or December — you could do the postseason at neutral warm weather or domed stadiums — you’d probably need to start no later than Aug. 1 to get even 81 games in by the end of October.
The NFL’s regular season is scheduled to begin Sept. 10, and there’s no obvious reason that couldn’t be significantly pushed back.
But it would also present more logistical challenges. You’re dealing with 55-man rosters, instead of 26 in baseball. There are more support staff, from coaches to trainers to stadium workers. Broadcast teams are bigger.
It’s just more, and with a vaccine online no earlier than 2021 it’s just hard to know how any of this is done safely and effectively.
One potential game-changer would be more and better tests. I’m unclear about how feasible this is, or how likely, but in a world in which tests were both plentiful and immediate you can see how this could be done.
Outside of that, I’m not sure how any of this looks.
I’m with you on the money. There will be a lot of pressure to get football going, both because of the profits and economics at stake and just as an emotional release.
Maybe by then public sentiment will have shifted. There’s a point here somewhere that economic factors will be even more real to people, and the appetite for diligent distancing will have faded.
Maybe we’re there by the fall, and the thinking will be that even if the NFL can’t keep the seal airtight it’s just too big and important to too many people in too many ways.
That’s certainly possible. But the NFL doesn’t want to be known as the business that thought it was above public health, and it doesn’t want to be remembered as the business that literally caused death in the name of profits.
This is the only thing I could present honestly:
- Medical advancements will give us enough tests that can provide immediate results that all players, coaches, support staff and media can safely move in and out of stadiums.
- Opening day, like you say, is Aug. 1. That gives us 92 days by the end of October, but stay with me here: It’s 118 days before Thanksgiving.
- That gives us a runway to play a 100-game season. We’ll play games at spring training ballparks to suppress travel concerns.
- The postseason will take place in Southern California, home of three big-league stadiums plus myriad more minor-league or college parks that should be able to host all games. I’d prefer the regular season to be played there, too, because the ball behaves differently in that thin desert air, but I’m just not sure the logistics make sense.
- With the games in good weather, we can start the postseason on Thanksgiving — what could be more symbolic? — and be done by the end of the year. It’s imperfect, obviously, but we could then have an offseason before a perhaps shortened spring training and even regular-season kickoff in 2021.
Look, even with all this, I’m not sure it would work.
But there might be a chance.
Oh, I absolutely agree with this. For sure. One hundred percent.
We’ll get into some more of this in the next question, but for now lets concentrate on the coaches.
It’s hard to imagine teams like the Panthers and Browns that hired new coaches not being a little behind.
It’s also hard to imagine teams like the Broncos and Chargers and Texans that either have coaches with low approval ratings or significant personnel changes not being a little behind.
This is subtle, but I think it could also be important: There’s been a reported surge of executives complaining about the league holding the draft as scheduled.
This is sometimes covered with talk about the league being tone-deaf, but I always read it as the executives whining with the cover of anonymity.
Because, yes, I get that this is messing with routine. Medicals and meetings and general information gathering can’t be done in the same way.
Before the Chiefs drafted Marcus Peters in 2015 and Tyreek Hill in 2016 they deployed scouts and executives to meet in person with their friends and family. That’s not uncommon with all picks, of course, but it was particularly important in the process of drafting those two players who each became Pro Bowlers.
If there’s a prospect like that in this year’s draft, the information-gathering process will have to be different.
It’s easy to see how some scouts and executives would be displeased with this.
But also: Deal with it.
People in all sports and many businesses can be tied to routines. That’s particularly true in football. The culture is (too) often about avoiding mistakes and a fear of failing on something new.
That’s going to be especially problematic right now.
And, I would argue, this could be an extra advantage for the Chiefs.
One of Andy Reid’s greatest strengths is his adaptability. He doesn’t do anything this year just because it’s how he did it last year. His offense changes every year, and every week. He wants his coaches to challenge him.
He’s won with lead running backs, and he’s won with passing games focused on the tight end and he’s won with speed. He’s won with game-plans tilted toward each side of the ball.
He’s coached through every trend the league has seen in two decades and succeeded through it all.
He hasn’t done that by making the league bend toward him. He’s done it by bending toward those trends and, more specifically, figuring out ways to stay ahead of those trends. The Chiefs’ front office is mostly the same way. They adapt.
In modern football history, I would argue that those traits have never been so valuable.
I am in complete agreement here. On everything.
I do believe in the idea that if you’re not getting better you’re getting worse. You need new players, new motivations, new ideas. This was one of my biggest frustrations in the Chiefs waiting a year too long to overhaul the defense.
There’s no way to prove this, of course, but I believe the human tendency inside championship teams is to lay off the throttle a bit ... and the human tendency inside teams chasing championships is to play with something like a productive desperation.
I also believe this: The 2020 Chiefs might be the clearest exception I could imagine:
Their roster is relatively young — stars like Patrick Mahomes and Tyreek Hill at the age it’s reasonable expect even more improvement, and others like Travis Kelce and Frank Clark and Tyrann Mathieu at the age it’s reasonable to expect maintaining a high level of play.
The offseason being wiped out is probably a thing that will be overplayed in some circles, but it does matter, and there’s no logical way to believe it wouldn’t be an advantage to teams with continuity and a disadvantage to teams without it.
But here’s one more reason I think it’s the right play. That roster got along. They are a group of friends who generally love each other — some hilarious and presumably temporary exceptions apply — and know that if a roster this talented wins just one Super Bowl they’ll look back on this time with some regret.
These things can be fluid and hard to read, but the Chiefs have a leadership structure in place that would seem to be allergic to apathy.
Mahomes does not seem the type to be satisfied. He is obviously blessed with ridiculous physical talent, but I have to believe that an important part of his success can be traced to being raised by a father who grinded through parts of 11 big-league seasons with six different teams.
The other major male influence in Patrick’s life changed teams 11 times in 21 big-league seasons.
Again, Patrick is wildly talented. And he had the good fortune to land in the perfect NFL place, with a brilliant head coach and lots of offensive talent.
But he’s also driven at least in part by a real-world experience that’s shown him the importance of doing all the little things to stay at the highest level. I just have a hard time seeing that guy satisfied two years into the opportunity of a lifetime.
Andy Reid, same thing. He spent two decades as a head coach trying to get to this moment, and now he’s set with a generational quarterback. You think he’s good with one title?
Tyrann Mathieu is a brilliant football mind with a work ethic that’s been proven over time. Similar things can be said of Frank Clark, Chris Jones (if he’s still around), Mitchell Schwartz and more.
Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe I’m being naive. But I think this is a good core to keep together, especially in this moment in time.
This might not come across well in the written word here, because I think you might need to have either heard it yourself or know our preschooler to fully appreciate it, but the sounds he made while playing a video game for the first time will never leave my brain.
It was like something unlocked inside of him, a wicked mixture of gut laughing and excitement and a little mind being blown — and this was on Excitebike.
I want to preface this next thing I’m going to say with a paragraph of disclaimers. I understand that a lot of people are scared, and hurting. I work at a newspaper, in journalism, so massive financial worry is never too far from my reality. I think about all of this constantly — the pain and stress others are facing and the understanding that I’m far from immune to the same at some point in the future.
But, at least at this moment, the time has been good for us. If you’d have asked me a few months ago what I wanted more of, I would’ve said time. This isn’t the way I’d want it, obviously, but I’m proud of how our family has handled the extra time together.
Our boys are closer than ever, and treating each other differently and better. This is just a coincidence of timing, but being closer and seeing our kindergartner’s reading tangibly improve over the last two weeks or so has been a thrill.
I’d give anything to be able to get back to normal life yesterday, but all we can do is deal with what’s in front of us. Stresses mount, and I think all of us have good days and bad, as well as good nights of sleep and bad.
But I also know that this is a time in our lives that we will never forget. We’ll always remember how we handled this, both the good and the bad. We’ll be able to see, over time, whether we used the time well.
I’m proud that we’ll have some moments of joy and laughter to mix in with everything else.
It’s an interesting question that I haven’t thought much about, but now that I am I’m struck by this:
The way that season went convinced me that Andy Reid was going to have long-term success.
It wasn’t just the 1-5 start. They lost five in a row, lost Jamaal Charles to an ACL tear and lost that fifth in a row when their running back was stripped of the ball by his own teammates on the potential game-winning drive.
That season was on a tee for a meltdown.
I’ve talked to guys about that moment over the years and they all tell a similar story. Reid did not change. He did not hang a new sign on the wall. He did not give some desperate pep talk. He did not offer false praise, and he did not challenge their manhood.
He continued to believe in the process. He continued to work. He continued to focus.
In turn, that’s what his players did. That’s what his assistantcoaches did, too. They got out of it. They didn’t lose again until January, in the division-round playoff game remembered for the fortnight-long 2-minute drill.
So, anyway, I’m not sure I can answer your question the way you might be intending.
Because to me, losing the handle on one season shouldn’t be that much of a problem. The bigger picture doesn’t change.
But my answer is that everything would’ve changed, because the same stuff that pulled the Chiefs through that season is the stuff that’s continued to pull them up and up and up in the years since.
Put another way: If Andy Reid was the kind of coach who could not pull a team up after a 1-5 start I might’ve believed he was the kind of coach who could not win a Super Bowl.
Speaking of what-ifs ...
... this is one that doesn’t get mentioned as much as it probably should.
There is no way to prove this, but I will always believe Yordano Ventura was positioned for the best season of his life in 2017. Everything I heard — some of this was before his death in January 2017, and it’s come into clearer focus since — was that he had changed his training and eating habits.
He had come to take baseball more like work, to rely less on his natural talents and more on an inner drive to prove he was more than a 100 mph fastball.
I’m not here to tell you he’d have won the Cy Young Award in 2017, or anything like that. But I do think he was building up and shaving some of the rough edges ahead of his age-26 season.
If you think about what the Royals needed then and in the years since, a significant part of it would be filled with a legitimate frontline starter. Hell, even now, he’d still be just 28.
There is no way to prove this, either, but I will always believe that Ventura’s death took the air out of that 2017 season. There were two general ways the team could’ve reacted. One would’ve been with a fierce edge, with a relentless drive to play for him, to be reminded of how life is precious and of the importance of making the most of every day.
To me, it seemed like the team reacted the other way — with an understandable sadness that just never quite left or was replaced by something more productive, in cold baseball terms.
The 2016 season was a lot of bad luck. How many teams lose two All-Stars on one play, for instance?
The 2017 season is remembered by many in the organization as a giant missed opportunity. The rebuild will always be a success because it peaked with the sport’s ultimate achievement.
But the Royals should have more to show for those next two seasons, with most of their core in place, than 81-81 and 80-82.
I’ll always wonder if they would’ve had more from 2017 without the persistent sadness of losing a brother and teammate, and with a frontline starter to lengthen the rotation.
My guess is they would’ve at least been in wild-card contention.
As for now, the Royals have more holes than Ventura could fill, but the rotation is very thin and they could use some bankable production in that spot. They’d be a step ahead of where they are now, almost certainly.
Of course, he could also be rehabbing a torn elbow right now. He might’ve never been able to manage his emotions well enough. There’s no telling. That’s what makes it so hard.
Well, I do remember unwittingly interrupting a player watching porn in the clubhouse. That’s the first that comes to mind.
I remember players openly mocking a teammate, like some bad after-school special. I remember Mike Swanson, the Royals’ VP of communications, telling Jose Guillen to be honest but to please keep it clean, and I remember Guillen responding with some version of, “Eff you, I’ll say whatever the eff I want.”
I remember that Guillen did not say “Eff.”
Speaking of Guillen, I remember him once tossing me the keys to his Rolls Royce Phantom and when I returned asking whether I’d noticed the floor mats. “Those cost $12,000,” he said. I do not remember why he wanted me to see his car.
I remember Frank White coming by to chat in the press box, and a hard foul ball coming through the window in front of him. I remember White hitting the deck, getting out of the way, and then staying there for a bit because he knew the TV cameras would point his way. And I remember him shaking off our laughter by saying something like, “I stopped catching them once they stopped paying me to catch them.”
This might be on my mind because of the last question, but I remember being in Atlanta for an NFL playoff game the day Ventura died. Dayton Moore happened to be in Atlanta that day, too — to speak for a friend’s charity event, if I remember correctly.
He invited me to his hotel room to talk. I was there for an hour, maybe more. We talked a lot about Ventura, but also a lot about life in general. I’ll never forget that conversation.
I remember being at a KU basketball practice and Bill Self screaming at Andrew Wiggins: “Best player in the country my ass! Tell me one thing you do to help us win right now!”
I remember being at a Mizzou basketball practice around 2013 or so and waiting something like 45 minutes after practice for Marcus Denmon and Kim English and a few others to finish a self-directed workout.
I remember calling a local sports executive for a story. He was on his cell phone at an airport and ended up losing his mind over an objectively benign question. It was all on background, so I’ll spare the details, but he ranted and then ended up calling back to apologize. I don’t ever remember someone so completely and unwittingly convincing me they’re not qualified for their job.
Speaking of that sort of thing, I remember Romeo Crennel trying to motivate his hopelessly overmatched football team with signs that said “ELIMINATE BAD FOOTBALL,” and, when that didn’t work, replacing them with signs that said “PLAY GOOD FOOTBALL.” Those signs did not work, either.
I remember when Gary Bedore, then the KU basketball beat writer for the Lawrence Journal-World, wrote a story about an in-home visit that Roy Williams had with a player. I guess Williams mentioned a banana nut bread that the player’s mom made, so of course Gary found the recipe and printed it in the dang paper.
I was in college at the time, working for the Topeka paper, and then-beat writer Kurt Caywood said: “I’ve just come to accept that there are some things Gary’s readers are going to know that mine aren’t.”
I remember Dustin Colquitt being gracious enough to play along with every dumb idea I’ve ever had save one: I asked if he’d be willing to sarcastically complain about his lack of playing time in the 2018 season, promising that I would make it abundantly clear that it was all a joke. “I see what you’re doing, and I do think it would be funny, but I just can’t go there,” he said. Fair enough.
I remember one of the first assignments I had at The Star, back when I was writing about high school sports. I went to a tennis practice, waited what seemed like four days for it be over, and then watched as the kid I was supposed to talk to walked the other way and left. His coach came over: “He’s not in the mood to talk today,” or something like that. I’d been on the job for about 10 minutes and been stood up by an honorable-mention All-EKL tennis player.
It’s all uphill from there, kids.
And, guys, I would gladly be stood up by someone like that again if it meant we had sports to watch.
Has appreciation for teachers ever been higher?
We’ve been lucky on this, at least so far. Our kids had great teachers this year, and I’m really sad that’s cut short. But especially with our kindergartner the days were long, and he’s been able to sort of reset.
The teachers have been great about sending daily lesson plans and materials. I’m sure there are families getting through 100 percent of it, but that’s not us, and it’s not going to be us.
I dork out on a lot of podcasts, including some around parenting, and they all have a similar message on this — give yourself a break, recognize that these are strange times for all of us, and know that you can’t replicate a full day of school at home.
My wife is the headmaster of our homeschool and she came up with something that seems to be working. We let the kids sleep in, we don’t rush breakfast, and we try to enjoy the extra time.
The general goal is to get two to four hours of school-type stuff in, whether that’s worksheets, math problems, reading, drawing, whatever. We let them watch four shows, which works out to about 90 minutes a day.
I don’t know what a professional would say about this setup, but it works for us and seems to be working for the kids. Our preschooler is into drawing and getting better with writing his name. The kindergartner’s reading has improved pretty quickly, actually, and it’s fairly easy to get him into learning activities that he doesn’t know are learning activities — a sight-word scavenger hunt, for instance, or laying down on a big piece of paper and tracing his body to map out all the organs.
But, even with all that, we’re also aware that the preschooler’s normal day is probably 75 percent playtime and even the kindergartner gets two recesses plus some “brain breaks” where they play games.
So, again, my wife has been amazing and has them doing a lot of productive stuff. But I also keep a list of movies on my phone and believe we’re all going to have good days and bad.
What none of us need is anyone making anyone else feel guilty about not being a qualified teacher right now.
Mine is what they’re calling the NES Classic Edition, which has been by far the best quarantine money I’ve spent. It doesn’t have every game I want — Contra, Double Dribble and RBI Baseball are the ones I miss most — but it hit most of my wheelhouse with Super Mario Bros (2 and 3 as well), Punch-Out, Excitebike, Zelda, Metroid, obviously Tecmo Bowl and others.
I actually feel really good on the swimming levels, especially if I’ve got fire to shoot. My biggest problem isn’t a particular level — all the 4s have their own challenges, especially as the fire wheels increase in number — but a particular problem.
You see, Gene, when it comes to video games I have the mindset of the worst shooter or hitter or cornerback — I let one mistake become two, and two become three.
Like, the other day, I went into world 5-1 with like seven lives and lost five of them with shameful efficiency. I was dying from basic turtles, for crying out loud. Once I did a light jump when I needed a high jump and I went straight off the screen, like Mario was jumping out of a plane or something.
The moment the wife walked in, if I remember correctly, was right at the third or fourth death. It was a basic bullet, I think, or maybe even one of those man-eating plants that come up.
Just an inexcusable mistake in that situation, and I have to know better. It’s unacceptable. I came too far, and played too well, to just throw it all away like that.
But my wife didn’t see it the same way.
But I think she would, if her view wasn’t clouded by the irrepressible regret of isolating through a pandemic with a grown man and husband who curses at a simple video game he first played when he was like 8.
I have to let you in on a little secret. For those of us accustomed to this work-at-home lifestyle, watching the rest of you open your eyes has been simultaneously fulfilling and hilarious.
For years I’ve had friends and neighbors snicker at me. When I say I’ve been working all day they say things like, “Yeah, I can totally tell because you didn’t even have time for a shower.” When I say I have a big day, they point to my sweatpants and laugh.
Well, who’s laughing now, huh?
Now, I will allow a few disclaimers here. At least for those of us with kids, the work-from-home gig isn’t as great right now. On days the kids are home I’m used to being able to work from the lobby of my gym, for instance.
Now I’m up in our bedroom and, yes, I still have my feet up but the ottoman isn’t big enough for my dog, and now when I want a snack I have to go down AND up a flight of stairs.
But even with these significant challenges it’s nice to feel some camaraderie with more of you. I simply cannot imagine why any of you are wearing anything that requires a belt. If it’s not made of tri-blend cotton or assembled with an elastic waist, what are you even doing?
The only downside is I always make myself laugh by coming back from the office in jeans and telling my family first thing after I walk through the door: “I gotta get out of these work clothes.”
That joke doesn’t hit quite the same now.
Hey, thank you, this means the world to me. I hope most of you have been reading this timesuck long enough to know I don’t include a lot of compliments from readers on here. That’s not what I want this to be about.
But I’m using this here because I want you to know that I feel the same in reverse.
I didn’t know it until I already had this job, but the best part of this job isn’t games or the moments or the awards or the writing.
The best part of my job is the connections with people, especially readers. And even with the Royals, Chiefs and Sporting Kansas City each winning championships, I don’t think I’ve ever felt more genuine connections with readers than these last three weeks or so.
So many have reached out with stories of joy and fear, of laughter and tears, of successes and ugliness. The trust showed is a privilege, and it’s something I understand has to be earned and honored.
Many of you have opened your hearts and your souls to me. I will never forget that, and will never stop trying to live up to it.
This week, as you might guess, I’m particularly grateful for you. I wish like hell that we had games to write about. I’m thankful like hell that I have you here anyway, reading and helping me along the way.