Mellinger Minutes: Thank you, sports’ return, Jamaal vs. Priest, cord cutting & more
The top of this time-suck is a thank you.
It’s a thank you to everyone who has reached out in the last month or so to share their story and trust me to tell it right, keep their secret, or protect their identity. It’s a thank you to everyone who has continued to read, continued to subscribe, or even purchased a new subscription.
It’s a thank you to everyone who writes in with a question for this, or the last few weeks has called to participate in the Mellinger Minutes For Your Ears podcast.
When sports got canceled, I was afraid of what might happen here. This weekly gimmick has grown beyond any expectation I had in many ways — in terms of reach, interest and the amount of time it takes to put together.
I know we’ve always colored outside the lines a bit and talked about things other than sports but I did wonder if we could survive here. These are early days still, unfortunately, because nobody seems to have a grip on when sports will return (I’ll guess below, though!).
But it struck me yesterday that the amount of responses this week is similar if not perhaps even a bit more than many weeks when we have actual sports.
There is no way I can thank you enough for that.
This thing started as a way for us to connect and, if I’m honest, a way for me to generate more column ideas. I’ve always thought that the more I know about what you’re thinking, the better I can write. This was a way for me to gather more information, sort of a longhand version of sports fan wiretap.
It turned into more than that, of course. For the last decade, my Mondays are spent putting this thing together. I’ve done it from home, the office, from NFL cities before or after a Chiefs road game and from MLB cities between Royals playoff games. It’s become a significant part of my life, and I’m overwhelmed to think it’s become a tiny part of yours.
That’s a privilege that’s not given, and has to be earned all the time. I hope I’m doing that. I know you’re doing your part and, one more time: thank you for that.
This week’s reading recommendation is Joe Posnanski on Willie Mays, No. 1 in his countdown of the 100 best players in baseball. The Mays piece is good, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not why I’m linking it here. The series has been a joy to read, particularly over the last month without sports, and I’d encourage you to click on any of your favorite players.
The eating recommendation — and strap on, going to be like this for a while — is literally any locally owned restaurant that you enjoy, want to last, and can afford to get carryout from and tip like you’re eating in. We’ve taken to doing carryout every Friday night, and it’s become a nice thing to look forward to every week. My wife doesn’t know this yet but I’m going to push to make it twice a week. Wednesdays can be long.
Before we get to the rest of this I ask three things of you fine people:
First, please listen to the podcast. It’s been fun so far, and we have a great guest lined up again this week. If you have a question you’d like answered, please call 816-234-4365 and leave your first name, where you’re calling from, and whatever you want to talk about.
Second, please continue to let me know how you’re getting through this. You can call that same number, email smellinger@kcstar.com, or reach me through Facebook or Twitter. DMs are open.
I want to know the good, the bad, and everything in between. The stories have informed much of what I’ve written already, some of what I’ve reported but haven’t yet written, and some of what I hope to write in the future.
Third, if you know of a high school or college senior who should be included in our senior appreciation series please let me know! Have had some good candidates come my way but there’s always room for more.
Please give me a follow on Twitter and Facebook and, as always, thanks for your help and thanks for reading.
OK. Here’s the show.
We talked about this on Mellinger Minutes For Your Ears with Gary Woodland last week, but golf seems best positioned to return.
The mechanics of the sport are social distancing friendly, if you will. Handshakes are out. Fans wouldn’t be allowed. Maybe caddies wear gloves and clubs are sanitized. Maybe caddies are allowed to drive carts and the players pull their own clubs. A course volunteer could rake each trap and pull each pin.
The locker rooms and meals would need to be organized, but these are logistics that could be managed.
Golf Channel reported that the Tour and players advisory council will meet today to talk about the evolving schedule, and that players will be given three to four weeks’ notice before play resumes. At the moment, a tournament scheduled for May 21-24 is still on the schedule but it’s hard to imagine that sticking.
There are so many hurdles to clear before sports can resume. The biggest seems to be testing. We need more tests, and quicker results. Until that happens I’m not sure there’s much of a conversation. There are some encouraging signs about that, but it’s still a thing that needs to happen.
Through various reports about potentially sequestering teams in Florida and Arizona hotels, baseball has shown it is willing to move mountains to hold games. The problem, then, is that mountains are hard to move.
Golf would seem to be the least complicated, though.
If nothing else, it’s the only major sport that could be played without the athletes or those who support them touching each other or the same equipment* or breaking guidelines on social distancing.
* I’m thinking a little of tennis here. It’s pretty close to golf in some ways, but the athletes would obviously touch the same ball. In NASCAR, I’m not sure how pit crews could follow the guidelines.
Like with anything else, there are financial elements at play. If golf returns before other major sports you would have to assume that TV ratings would break records. That’s a hell of a temptation, not just for immediate exposure and advertising but the potential to have a captive sports audience for the future.
Who knows how many people can be turned into golf fans with something like that?
It doesn’t seem like it.
Every report and every discussion about the Arizona plan, or the Cactus/Grapefruit plan, or anything else leaves two indisputable facts:
1. Baseball owners and players are apparently willing to do just about anything to salvage a season.
2. There does not seem to be a solution in existence that does not come with enormous challenges.
There are logistics. Like, are players really going to be willing to leave their families for four months? Can MLB avoid the optics of taking preferential treatment during a pandemic while others suffer?
Are we really talking about a plan that would have players separated throughout the stands but standing next to each other and sliding into each other on the bases? What about the catchers and batters being within an arm’s reach? What about sharing meals, and bathrooms, and locker rooms?
What happens when a hotel worker contracts the virus somewhere, spreads it to a player, who then spreads it to others? Is the league shut down? Quarantined for 14 days?
Same as other sports, baseball will have a clearer path forward when and if plentiful and immediate testing is available. That, along with some creativity motivated by desperation, is the key to unlock the possibility of games without fans.
But you’re still dealing with 26 (or more) players, plus more than a dozen coaches, trainers, and support staff.
I’m just not sure how that happens.
I’m more optimistic about the NFL.
Just lay the timelines out there. You could squeeze an 81-game season and full postseason into four months. If you’re desperate enough to move all games to Arizona and/or Florida, you might be able to start a season as late as Sept. 1.
Then you’re done by the end of December, and you get a six-week offseason before spring training starts on schedule. If you need to, spring training can be trimmed and perhaps you could delay or even shorten the 2021 season as well. Maybe the financial models tell you that’s worth it. Who knows.
But with the NFL, there’s no compelling reason the season can’t be pushed back even further. This is extreme, but what if the first game was Jan. 1? The regular season would be done by April, the playoffs in May, and you’d have six or seven weeks before the start of training camp (which, lets be honest, could also be trimmed or pushed back a bit).
Normal isn’t coming back until a vaccine is not just created but produced on a scale that makes it available to everyone. Even then the games and leagues might look different. We can talk about that sometime.
But along with advancements in testing, I’m hopeful that we get close enough to have games on TV, at least.
Maybe there’s an example that can change my mind but I can’t think of an NFL season in which one team would have such a strong case as the favorite.
The Chiefs were going to be the Super Bowl pick anyway. They won the last game, improved as the season went on, and return a young roster with a creative coaching staff that’s proved an ability to find solutions to new problems.
So, that’s just the starting point. That’s just where we’d be in a normal year.
Add the fact that, unlike last year, draft experts generally expect the board to break in a way that should allow the Chiefs to address their biggest needs with their first-round pick. Thirty-one teams would trade rosters, so this is a high-level criticism, but the Chiefs could use a cornerback, a linebacker who can cover, and some interior offensive linemen.
Various mocks show well-regarded players at each of those positions being available with the 32nd pick.
That wasn’t the Chiefs’ reality last year. Of course, that turned into a blessing because that first-round pick was used in the Frank Clark trade but the point stands. The Chiefs need cheap labor. Draft picks are relatively cheap labor.
Now, take all of that and add that the offseason programs for all teams are almost certainly wiped out. That’s a significant advantage for teams with strong coaching staffs and continuity with both coaches and players.
How many teams have better coaching staffs?
How many teams have more continuity with coaches and players?
The Chiefs, with an offense that for two years hasn’t been stopped by anyone other than the 2018 Chiefs defense, haven’t even lost their offensive coordinator.
The more you think about it the more the field tilts the Chiefs’ way. Because it’s more than just continuity. The teams that are going to be best prepared on the other side of this are the teams with players genuinely dedicated to the collective purpose, and not a business transaction.
That environment is hard to create, but the Chiefs have landed on something real because everyone in that organization understands the gift of Mahomes is a realistic chance at a championship.
If you’re playing for the kind of team that would mark 11-5 and a division round playoff loss as a successful season, you might let your concentration fade at times.
But if you’re with the kind of team that will honestly call a Super Bowl loss a disappointment then you’re probably doing everything possible — even and especially when your coaches aren’t watching — to maximize.
That’s the Chiefs right now.
Oh, damn, here’s a question I’m going to spend entirely too much time thinking about.
I think these are my five, in no particular order.
- Bo Jackson. I might write more about this later in the week, but it’s not a stretch to say that watching Bo Jackson changed my life. He captured me. He was a folk hero, but in real time. The stuff he did moved my imagination. In my head, he was what sports could be at their best: spontaneous, breathtaking, unforgettable. If I was a kid 20 years ago, I imagine it’s how I’d have felt about Tiger Woods. Fifteen years ago, it may’ve been LeBron James. Today, perhaps Patrick Mahomes. We don’t get to choose what makes us love sports.
- The 2014 AL Wild Card game. The celebration is the only video I keep on my phone that isn’t about my wife or kids. The outpouring of emotion from that game was therapeutic. There were baseball moments in there — Hosmer’s triple is the first of many that come to mind — and strategic wrinkles (they broke Jon Lester) and those are example of what I hope my kids learn to love about baseball. But, mostly, that was about a city rallying behind a team in a way that I had never experienced before.
- The 2012 Border War basketball game in Lawrence. Another part of what I hope my kids love about sports is rivalries. I hope they’re able to feel when certain games tangibly mean more, for the trivial and also definitive reason that the other group of athletes wears the wrong uniform. No offense to any Chiefs game against the Broncos or Raiders or Patriots over the years, but I can’t think of a Kansas City game in my lifetime with such palpable distaste.
- Do we have time run Wasp? One more thing I hope my kids learn to love about sports is all that goes into preparing for moments. Maybe this is recency bias, but I can’t think of a better example than the time the 24-year-old unicorn quarterback asked his coaches if they thought the protection could hold up long enough to execute the play they’d practiced and then setup with another play earlier in the game to steal the biggest moment of the biggest game in America. Whew.
- My driveway, 1980s. I am cheating. Of course there are no highlights. But I want my kids to love playing sports, too. I want them to know that if they have anywhere from one to 10 friends over they can create an all-day, all sports competition: H-O-R-S-E, Knockout, one-on-one, home run derby, longest football throw, fastest sprint, fastest bike ride around the block and more. I mean, that’s what we did, anyway.
Priest Holmes had gaudier numbers.
He went over 2,000 yards combined rushing and receiving three years in a row. Charles never did that once, though he did get to 1,900 twice.
Holmes led the league in rushing with 1,555 yards in 2001, then the next year went for 1,615. Charles’ best season was 1,509 yards in 2012. He never led the league.
Holmes led the league in touchdowns twice. Charles once. Holmes scored 48 touchdowns in 2002 and 2003; Charles scored 44 in his career.
All of that is true, and I know this debate has taken off in some corners of Chiefs fans, but honestly I’m not sure it’s all that close.
Charles was better.
I want to be careful to not present any of this as a knock on Holmes. He was terrific. He also played behind one of the best offensive lines in league history, and in 2003, the year he rushed for an insane 27 touchdowns — then an all-time record, now tied for second — he played on the league’s best offense.
Charles was continually let down by his coaches and those in charge of putting talent around him. He was a star too often surrounded by low wattage. In 2012, when he rushed for that career high yardage total, the Chiefs won just two games. In one of them, the Chiefs needed 288 total yards from him, including a bonkers 91-yard touchdown run that looked like some weird real life glitch.
The gap between what Charles provided and what was provided for him might be best described with the Raiders home game that year. He had just five carries. Asked why that happened, head coach Romeo Crennel initially admitted he did not know, and may’ve even said he wasn’t aware, before offering that Peyton Hillis was going strong that day.
Yes, Peyton Hillis, who had — *checks notes* — four carries that day.
Here’s another way to look at it:
In that 2003 season, Holmes averaged 4.4 yards per carry. The other running backs on that team averaged 4.7 yards per carry.
In that 2012 season, Charles averaged 5.3 yards per carry. The other running backs on that team averaged 3.9 yards per carry.
Here’s another way to look at it:
Invent a time machine and switch places — Charles goes when and where Holmes played, and vice versa — is there any chance Holmes looks better with the comparison?
Again, Holmes was a terrific back. Smart, relentless, driven. But I’m not sure there’s anything he could do that Charles couldn’t, and there was plenty that Charles could do that Holmes couldn’t.
I was probably the only kid in the five-state region rocking a Warriors Starter jacket in the early 1990s.
Those Run TMC teams spoke to me in almost a personal way. I’d grown up — that’s not entirely accurate, let’s say I’d been raised — to be a college basketball and baseball fan.
I suppose that for most of us who are lucky enough to have our dads in our lives our fandoms sort of follow. My dad’s two favorite sports, by far, were and are college basketball and baseball. That’s what was on TV (and radio) the most, so that’s what I watched the most.
The NBA was sort of foreign to me. If you’d asked me at 10 years old, I’d probably have said they don’t play defense in the pros. That they don’t try until the fourth quarter. That college basketball is just better to watch.
WGN first opened my eyes. The Jordan Bulls were basically a local team for us, with all or nearly all their games on TV. TBS had Dominique Wilkins and the Hawks. One of the networks put on national games on the weekends, and I believe TNT had broadcasts on the weeknights.
I don’t have an aha moment, or one particular game that pulled me into the NBA. But it makes sense that it went like this — Jordan was sort of my gateway drug, and maybe I caught them playing the Warriors once (would’ve had to have been a home game) and I fell for their gorgeous brand of ball movement and scoring.
I’d watched Mitch Richmond a lot when he was at K-State, of course, but seeing him in the NBA was a different experience. He wore a different colored uniform, and played a different looking game.
I tried to mimic Tim Hardaway’s crossover and, for a time, even his ugly looking jumper. Chris Mullin was so clean and confident with the ball, exploiting the tiniest margins. I do have a distinct memory of him wide open at the 3 point line, the shot swishing through with no rim, and Hubie Brown on the broadcast saying it was like a layup. I was hooked.
I owned three basketball jerseys as a kid: Chris Mullin’s No. 17 Warriors, Tim Hardaway’s No. 10 Warriors, and Mullin’s No. 9 Dream Team.
My favorite college teams have elements of that style. My dad used to let me stay up late to watch the Oklahoma-Loyola Marymount games*. I loved Chris Jackson even more than Shaquille O’Neal at LSU.
* I just looked it up and here are scores: 136-103, 136-121, 172-112. Mercy.
That 2002 Kansas team that seemed to just take the ball out of the net and go trade three for two. The 2005 Illinois team that Bill Self recruited and Bruce Weber coached to 37-2, well, they played a little more defense than these other teams I’ve mentioned but that guard-dominated, fast movement, kill-you-with-skill style was there.
To me, those are examples of basketball at its best. It’s a sort of impromptu choreography, with movement and skill giving the offense an advantage that the defense can only hope to limit.
I don’t know that those Run TMC teams did it best, but in my mind they did it the most. And they changed my sports fan trajectory: I still watch basketball through that lens, in some ways, and I have an appreciation for the NBA that would either not exist in the same way or have waited until LeBron or the Steph Curry Warriors.
This is like a theme...
Does Bo count? Bo probably doesn’t count. Too local, even though he played for the Raiders. And, actually, I’m reading this question as current athlete.
Assuming that’s right, we have to include athletes who’ve played in games I’ve covered, right? OK, so with the ground rules maybe in place let’s do a list?
A list!
10. Nolan Arenado, 3B, Rockies. He’s got some changing-the-game in him. Third base has, maybe subtly, been a stagnant position. Arenado is basically a shortstop playing over there, routinely making plays that other guys can’t imagine. Also, he doubles as one of the game’s best and most consistent hitters.
9. Stefon Diggs, WR, Bills. You’re keeping me from choosing anyone local, which I’m noting here because otherwise Tyreek Hill would absolutely be on this list. There’s just nobody like him. But Hill studies Diggs as much as any receiver in the league, with his route running, and you can see some similarities.
8. Aaron Donald, DL, Rams. It can be comical to watch the Rams on defense. Donald is just so consistent, and so relentless. If he’s blocked by one human, that human is almost always trampled. If he’s blocked by two humans it can be a fair fight. Sometimes.
7. Saquon Barkley, RB, Giants. This is tilted a bit because he’s on my nerdy keeper dynasty team but other than the quarterback you aren’t letting me choose Barkley might have the best highlights in the league.
6. Max Scherzer, SP, Nationals. He’s always been supernaturally talented, but I’ve loved watching the rest of his game fill in, too. He’s absurdly competitive, obviously, and that’s often the lead description. But he’s so damn smart, too, and consistent at a position that doesn’t often allow such consistency.
5. Mike Trout, CF, Angels. One of the real bummers about potentially losing a baseball season is potentially losing a season of Prime Trout. The same way we had Jordan in the 90s, Trout is on track to at least be in the debate about the greatest baseball player in history.
4. Christian Pulisic, MF, Chelsea and USMNT. He is a comet streaking across the sky, a 21-year-old American with the chance to be one of the best players in the best soccer league in the world.
3. Francisco Lindor, SS, Indians. He’s a switch-hitting shortstop with power, speed, great defense and joy. That’ll play.
2. Giannis Antetokounmpo, F, Bucks. The best thing about the NBA is the freakish athleticism married with skill and there’s not a better example right now.
1. LeBron James, F, Lakers. He’s been the world’s best player for years, with remarkable consistency and production against (my opinion here) the highest expectations for any athlete of my lifetime with the possible exception of Tiger Woods. The worst thing anyone can say about his career is that he mishandled free agency 10 years ago.
Eh, not really.
We’ve had Google Fiber, and it’s great. There are some nits I could pick, but their customer service has been great, the hardware reliable, the service uninterrupted. We’re happy.
But we also have Netflix, Disney+, ESPN+, HBO and Amazon. There are a few shows we watch on cable — This is Us, 60 Minutes, sometimes Saturday Night Live, maybe others I’m not thinking of right now — but 90 percent of the reason we have cable is for live sports. We can get that with YouTube TV and save some money. And watch it wherever we are on a phone or computer.
So, if you want to make a comparison maybe it’s more like dropping the print subscription and going digital only.
My cord cutting — and we’re just in the free trial period on YouTube, but we’ll probably stick with it — is more about saving money with a service built more for modern times.
That’s a heck of a lot like a digital newspaper subscription, right?
I’ve become something like a subscription zealot over the years, particularly with outlets that have traditionally been in print. The digital ad model is beyond broken, and even if it wasn’t I would argue that journalism incentivized by subscriptions is generally superior to journalism incentivized by ads/clicks.
The (short term, at least) destruction of ad revenue has made the point stronger than I could’ve imagined.
This isn’t charity. We need to be worth your money — $30 for a year of sports coverage, $50 for the whole website — and that’s on us. Not just that, but we need to be so worth the money that you not only have a subscription but value the product and speak of it in a way that encourages others.
That’s our charge. I hope we meet that standard for you.
I can’t tell if this is a sarcastic question or a reference to a vacation we took in February. Either way, I can talk vacation with you all day.
At the moment it’s the weirdest thing to think that exactly two months ago we were in Florida, on the beach. It was the first vacation that we’d taken with just the four of us, and it turned out to be my favorite.
The kids are at near perfect ages for it — we had a direct flight, short Uber from the airport, then four nights at a hotel we left exactly once. The fire alarm went off at 3 one morning and that’s just become a funny story.
I hope we can do it again next year.
I’m probably like a lot of you — have some trips this summer that I’m hoping to salvage, but afraid might lose.
The first is a fishing trip next month. I’ve never been much of a fisherman, but fell hard and quick for the trip. No technology, no responsibilities, no nothing except being on a boat and making jokes and talking about life and anything else.
I know I’ve mentioned that trip here before, but it was organized by my father in law. He passed away in January. The trip this year would’ve been tough, but important.
The second is an annual trip with a group of my oldest and best friends. Most of us families now, and we’re spread out across the country and in three different continents. Some of my best memories have been made on that trip, to a different place every year. At least at the moment, the guys overseas are having a hard time knowing whether they can even make it back to the country.
I know there are people with worse problems, and if this is the worst I get I’ll know I’m incredibly fortunate.
But it’s still a bummer.
I’ve thought about this every once in a while, and usually have a different answer each time. Because I never really seriously thought about anything else. From the time I was 12 or so this is all I wanted to do.
Weird, I know.
My dad was a lawyer, and the son of a lawyer. My parents’ friends had reason to expect at least one lawyer between my sister and me. If a different set of circumstances hit, who knows, maybe that would’ve been me.
Over the years I’ve been intrigued with various other jobs in sports. Front office execs and scouts work absurd hours but have interesting work. Team directories are full of people doing amazing work in the community on behalf of sports. The best example I can think of right now is what Kyle Vena and his team have done with the Urban Youth Academy.
For years as a kid, I was fascinated by buildings. I could spend an entire day in my room with Legos, and there was a time my parents kept a stack of posterboards behind a cabinet because I’d mock up what I imagined were blueprints for everything from mansions to skyscrapers to baseball stadiums. We spent a lot of time visiting grandparents in Chicago, and my favorite thing was walking around downtown and staring at the buildings.
That’s a desperate reach for credibility because this is true: it’s too much of a George Constanza answer for me to expect you to take seriously, but if I couldn’t be a sports writer and could choose any other profession other than “independently wealthy” it would probably be architecture.
More and more as an adult, the idea of working with and for the community is appealing. I love Kansas City so thoroughly. The best parts of my job are the moments — from writing about a playoff run or a pandemic — when I feel connected to people around town.
To be able to do something like that for a living would be a gift.
I don’t know what that would be, exactly, but if you’re making me choose a different job that’s something I’d be looking for.
Hell yes, Todd.
Had my first experience of trying to buy a gift card for a restaurant that closed last week. I’m hoping Westport Cafe opens on the other side of this. It was the first Kansas City restaurant I introduced my mom to that she loved, and it was one of my favorite splurge-y places to go with my wife.
These restaurants need us, and if we want them to be open when things get closer to normal they need our help now.
It really is so weird to think that you can do some actual good by spending money at a restaurant, but that’s our reality now, if you’re among the fortunate who can afford it.
This week, I’m particularly grateful that my hair — more or less — survived the Covid Cut. It was done out of necessity, obviously, but I have to say it’s fuller and looks better than I expected (feared). Combine it with a “beard” that can hold on for dear life and I’m here to say I think the tight-and-bright will outlast the pandemic. Some changes aren’t terrible!
This story was originally published April 14, 2020 at 5:00 AM.