Mellinger Minutes: Buck (finally), the Chiefs (maybe!), and the Border War (returns)
Buck O’Neil should not have needed the Early Baseball Era committee to be elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. He should have been in 15 years ago, when he somehow fell one vote shy, when he was still alive and could have felt some of the love returned that he spent a lifetime giving to others.
That mistake will never be fully made up.
But baseball did get better on Sunday with O’Neil’s election to the Hall of Fame, along with five others, with the Hall benefiting more from the exchange than O’Neil’s legacy.
A twist of emotions comes along with this one. The disappointment of baseball’s failure 15 years ago is real, but so is the wild irony that for as cruel as it felt for O’Neil to miss induction before he died, he turned it into one more signature of a life so incredibly well lived.
Buck was deflated about that vote. Don’t let anyone tell you different. He was not immune to feeling let down. The point is that he didn’t let that disappointment transfer to others. He didn’t give anyone reason to feel sorry for him, or angry for him, and instead removed his own disappointment and filled it with pride for the 16 men and one woman who received baseball’s highest honor. He even spoke for them, when they couldn’t do it themselves.
His speech remains one of the greatest in the Hall’s history, so good that we’ll link it if you’d prefer to watch in another window but otherwise let’s just embed it here:
O’Neil’s last public act is one of the greatest examples of turning a negative to a positive that we have.
Because O’Neil was not only the perfect person to speak on that stage; he was the only one who could have done it so personally, so joyfully, so accurately. Here in Kansas City it can be easy to think everyone knows O’Neil like we do, but that’s not true, and other than Ken Burns’ timeless documentary and appearances with David Letterman that speech may have exposed more people to Buck than any other moment.
Baseball — and this was as much a my bad as anything else — created the Buck O’Neil Lifetime Achievement Award, given no more than once every three years “to honor an individual whose extraordinary efforts enhanced baseball’s positive impact on society, broadened the game’s appeal, and whose character, integrity and dignity are comparable to the qualities exhibited by O’Neil.”
That wouldn’t have happened had O’Neil been inducted 15 years ago.
If you go to the Hall of Fame museum, you will see a life-size bronze statue of O’Neil inside, his smile and warmth welcoming all who enter. It is magnificent, and you cannot miss it.
That wouldn’t have happened had O’Neil been inducted 15 years ago.
This is what’s meant when I say I don’t feel the right to be angry on O’Neil’s behalf for the exclusion 15 years ago. It’s because he turned that disappointment into one more example of life that helped so many others, and in fact enhanced the ways that life is remembered and honored.
O’Neil’s memory did not need this election. We are and should celebration the moment, and I cannot wait to see Bob Kendrick’s speech on his friend’s behalf. But this will be the rare induction that does nothing to enhance the honoree’s legacy.
O’Neil didn’t need this. Not nearly as much as the Hall of Fame did, and baseball did..
In that way, maybe this is how it should have always happened. Buck got one last moment to show the world how he lived, baseball took more steps to make sure that life will always be remembered, and now he’ll get that last honor, joining the 17 he spoke for and so many others whose lives were made better by Buck’s friendship and way.
This week’s reading recommendation is an ambitious project by the Washington Post, with examples of the types of important stories that aren’t being told as America’s local newspapers struggle and too often fold. The eating recommendation is the butternut squash beignets at Savoy.
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Yeah, I don’t get it. I don’t understand why the offense is struggling like this.
I know all the theories, everything from Andy Reid being distracted to the Cover 2 to Eric Bieniemy taking on too much to bad luck and everything else and none of it presents a satisfactory explanation.
The Chiefs are next-to-last in turnovers — only the *Jets* have more — after ranking fourth, third, seventh and first in that category the last four seasons.
Two of the Chiefs’ three lowest yardage outputs with Mahomes at quarterback have come in the last three games.
Six of his worst eight games by passer rating have come since the start of October.
He has matched his career high in interceptions with five games to go, and noting that at least half of the 12 have hit his own receiver first is both a sad and incomplete explanation for the struggles.
Mahomes is on pace for career worsts in completion percentage, touchdown percentage, interception percentage, yards per attempt, yards per completion, yards per game, passer rating, QBR and, well, basically every statistical measurement you can think of.
His decisions are not sharp, his passes too often inaccurate, his body language frustrated.
I don’t get it.
The Chiefs should be ripping apart Cover 2s with Tyreek Hill running drags and Travis Kelce spinning linebackers and Clyde Edwards-Helaire on screens and Mahomes taking advantage of the space with first down runs.
They show flashes of patience and efficiency, with the other team’s two deep safeties turned Into props as the Chiefs exploit short and intermediate routes.
But as defenses have exaggerated their deep coverage against the Chiefs, essentially begging them to string together long drives with short gains, the Chiefs are simply not up to the task. Not consistently, anyway.
Here’s one measurement: the Chiefs have had 129 drives of 10 plays or more since Mahomes’ ascension to QB1 at the start of 2018. The 12 games of 2021 represent 20% of the total over that time, and include 24% of those 10-play drives. That number should be much higher considering how teams are defending them.
NFL postgame press conferences have never been illuminating, and that’s probably truer now than ever, but I did think Sunday’s served as an exception.
Separately and presumably without coordination, Mahomes and Reid each couched self-criticism with some form of “I know I say this every week, but…”
Also, Mahomes talked specifically of needing to “mange the game” better.
That’s a wild place for a group like this, to be acknowledging the same needs every week, and to cite game management as a place for improvement.
Weird times we live in.
One thing that about humans in general and sports fans in particular is that we’re never really satisfied, so while it’s true that the Chiefs are in much better position than a month ago it’s also true that this is a hard thing to overlook:
The Chiefs defense’s run of success has come against the Giants (28th in scoring), Packers (with Jordan Love), Raiders (have scored 16 or fewer in four of their last five), Cowboys (without Amari Cooper and Tyron Smith), and Broncos (lol).
The four times the Chiefs have played a team currently in the AFC playoff picture they gave up 36, 30, 38 and 27 points.
Now, certain disclaimers need to be screamed here. The Chiefs cannot control who they’ve played these last five games, and the improvement coincided with Juan Thornhill replacing Dan Sorensen as the every down free safety, Melvin Ingram providing more pass rush juice, and Frank Clark getting healthy.
That stuff matters, and it matters a lot.
But this Chiefs team is not built to win games like this.
Winning ugly is a feature, not a flaw, but with a team that is so heavily built — both financially and schematically — around stars it’s hard to imagine winning ugly all the way to the Super Bowl.
At some point, they’re going to need to win a game 31-28 or something like that, and the Chiefs offense has scored 20 or fewer points in five of its last six games.
This isn’t just underachieving the standard set by Mahomes. The only other time the Chiefs have had a run like this with Reid as coach was the end of the 2014 season, which is Reid’s only team here that didn’t make the playoffs and the one that did not have a touchdown catch by a receiver all season.
So while I hear those of you saying, Hey, relax, Mahomes is 26 years old and already an MVP and Super Bowl champion, he’ll figure this out … and that’s where I tend to sit, too.
It just seems unrealistic that a group with this kind of talent would go from being the league’s most dynamic offense to mediocre and, by the way, that word choice — mediocre — is not sportswriter hyperbole.
The Chiefs now rank 13th in scoring, which is the 59th percentile and probably overselling it since they rank 20th in scoring since Week 7.
Again, just to emphasize: this group has earned some benefit of the doubt, there isn’t a defense in the league that will feel comfortable defending these guys in the playoffs.
But at some point, yeah, it would be nice to see that with even a low level of consistency.
I know there’s a lot of attention being directed toward the coaches, and especially without locker room access I don’t know how productive it is to speculate about how the specific dynamics of the collaboration of play calling have changed.
What I know is that Reid has a track record of diving into the work, and he can be fairly held accountable (good or bad) for virtually everything that happens with the offense.
My favorite theory at the moment is that a series of dominoes have fallen in a way that’s just sort of putting a squeeze on everyone.
The Super Bowl loss, the tragedy caused by Britt Reid, the pressure to get back to the highest level of the sport … it would make sense that the humans involved would individually press a little, especially with defenses demanding paper cuts instead of machetes to get into the end zone.
Maybe that means Mahomes is throwing the ball a little faster than he should, which affects the accuracy, and the catchability. Maybe the receivers, knowing that Cover 2 is taking away the deep passes, are trying just a little hard to break big YAC plays, which could be affecting both their route precision and drops.
Maybe the coaches aren’t getting creative enough, and have been letting a problem that should have been solved in September marinate through to the doorstep of the postseason. Maybe the front office was too hyper focused on the offensive line (which is markedly improved) and not enough on closing the deal with one more pass catching threat.
The NFL’s genius is in parity, and this year’s AFC is, well, it’s basically a parody of the emphasis on parity: entering Monday night, the No. 7 seed was just one game behind the No. 1 seed, and the No. 12 seed was just just one game behind the No. 6 seed.
It’s all bonkers, which is exactly how the NFL likes it, which means one more season in which no ending should be a surprise.
If the Chiefs figure it out, then it’s just what we thought before the season, and they’re the NFL version of Alabama having a midseason crisis before storming into the playoff.
If the Chiefs end up losing a playoff game 21-18 or something because Mahomes missed a deep pass and another ball bounced off Kelce’s hands for a pick-6 then it’s just what we’ve all seen for the last month or so, the Chiefs as the latest version of the Super Bowl loss hangover.
I still think it’s likelier that the Chiefs get going, and that the rest of the AFC should be ashamed of itself for allowing this.
But the Chiefs have a lot to prove between then and now.
This is so weird.
The Chiefs are tied for fifth with 17 drops, according to NBC Sports. That’s certainly too many, and individually Tyreek Hill is tied for the most in the league, according to Pro Football Focus.
But Hill’s drop percentage is actually down a little from a year ago, according to PFF. Travis Kelce’s is up from last year, but still lower than his career average.
So perhaps the problem with drops is less about how many and more about when, and how.
Consider that Mahomes has nine interceptions on throws not graded by PFF as turnover-worthy, which is not only by far the most in the league but means that Mahomes has thrown more interceptions ON GOOD THROWS than he’s thrown interceptions TOTAL in either of his last two seasons.
We can go down a rabbit hole and try to explain all of this, and for me, this is the part that lends some credence to the theory I offered in the last answer but I think we’re all smart enough to know it can’t be just one thing.
They have a lot to fix, but it’s worth keeping in perspective that they have a lot to fix while on a five-game win streak and shouting distance of the top overall seed and AFC’s only bye.
This is alpha behavior: playing much less than your best, but still a tweak here or there from being the team to which everyone else in the conference is rolling their eyes with disgust..
That’s between you and your God, but I thought it was interesting that Sorensen himself and the others made available by Chiefs PR and NFL rules — Reid, Mahomes and Mathieu — each stopped short of going I told you so on the media or fans.
That’s not because they’re unwilling to call anyone out.
It’s because they know the criticism was fair.
Sorensen made two really good plays against the Broncos — the pick-6 and breakup on the two-point conversion attempt were each a combination of preparation, quick thinking, and physical act.
And those plays were in a specific role on this defense — a sort of hybrid linebacker/third safety in certain sub packages. He’s fine in that role, and it’s not his fault the coaches were slower than they needed to be to put him back there.
This is Sorensen’s eighth season. He’s certainly much closer to the end than the beginning, and it’s increasingly clear that he’ll be remembered as a strong special teams player, a man with a remarkable knack for making big plays, and a limited athlete (at least by NFL standards) who could get quickly overexposed in the wrong role.
I think we’ve seen all of that this year, haven’t we?
I don’t mean to #WellActually the question here, but the Bills are second in the league in scoring and have 26 or more points in all but three of their games. The Patriots have 24 or more in each of their last eight*.
*This paragraph was written before the Monday night game. I planned on updating with new numbers, but honestly, the fact that any points were scored in tsunami winds like that is a miracle.
So, it’s objectively true that both of those teams have been much more consistent than the Chiefs.
But I don’t think that’s the point of the question. The point is the Chiefs are in great shape, particularly considering some of their struggles, and and the rest of the AFC is muddy enough that the Chiefs could make the Super Bowl without the offense ever fully taking traction.
Buffalo has a high ceiling, the Chargers have a lot to like, and Bill Belichick is building a bully on both sides in New England. But none of those teams are good or consistent enough to believe the Chiefs need to hang 35 to win a playoff game.
It’s just time for the Chiefs to find a rhythm, and I think it was fair to think that the bye would help them reset, and that we’d see more of the team from Vegas than the one that struggled against the Packers.
The pieces are all there, but at times it feels like the offense is sort of fighting reality. It’s almost like they’re fighting like heck to make it 2018 again when they might be better served embracing the challenge to evolve and win in other ways.
That means shorter passes not just on check downs against Cover 2, but with designs. Get the linemen — especially the guys in the middle — in space and downfield blocking screens.
Get more short crosses, more angle routes for Edwards-Helaire, more scrambles for first downs against man defense.
The Chiefs’ talent and coaching provide the answers to every question an NFL defense is capable of raising, but the group has to embrace what that all will look like.
I hear this a lot, but I’m not even sure what that means, or why it’s relevant. I’m not sure two schools have ever explained a nonconference contract by saying, “Well, it just felt like we each had the same to gain.”
This is an especially irrelevant argument when it comes to — and I’m inherently biased but — the best rivalry in college sports.
I would argue that the longtime focus from KU people about who had more to gain was in many ways a self-own about how important the rivalry is: KU hates Mizzou so much that it was keeping score without games being played.
And while beating KU at men’s basketball would mean more for Mizzou than beating Mizzou would mean for KU, I’m not sure what Mizzou has to gain this weekend from what would should be an absolute bloodbath.
The best part about college sports is the rivalries, and for too long the pause on the Border War and all the pettiness and hatred that goes along with it made college sports a less interesting and relevant place.
This restart to the rivalry comes with suboptimal timing, because Mizzou men’s basketball and KU football are at the moment not up to the task of making the games compelling.
But it’s a start. And I can’t wait to be there to watch it in person.
Speaking of Mizzou basketball…
You guys, it’s really bad. Mercy. It’s awful.
Cuonzo Martin came to Mizzou as a logical hire worth celebrating. His ceiling was never going to be higher than his ability to recruit, but he was a grown man with a track record of success. If Mizzou wasn’t going to be a national power under his watch, then they figured to be a decent bet to climb away from the embarrassment of the Kim Anderson years and toward a better place.
Woof.
They are often a painful watch on offense, and don’t defend nearly enough to make up for it. Nobody should be getting blown out by UMKC and Liberty in Year 5.
The St. Louis connection hasn’t turned into enough recruiting success. It’s hard to understand how a roster is built in modern college basketball without better shooting.
Martin is an awe-inspiring man. He leads with his heart, and by all accounts is motivated by the highest ideals. The world is better with people like that succeeding.
But this is not success — no NCAA Tournament wins, and a 30-40 conference record that figures to dive by the end of this season.
You probably know the contract details. Martin’s buyout dropped from $6 million to $3 million this spring, and then drops again to $1 million after this season.
It’s never good when a discussion about a coach turns to citing buyouts. Martin is an honorable man, and college basketball is better when his voice is prominent.
But he’s gotta do better than this.
Bill James, and it’s not close, because this is a pretty easy case to make:
Through his relentless challenge of conventional wisdom, James changed the way baseball is watched and played more than anyone else in the last 40 years.
His books — starting with the Baseball Abstracts, which nerds of a certain age got for Christmas every year as kids — set the framework for an entirely different way of analyzing and competing in the sport.
We can have a healthy debate about the unintended consequences of all this, and a conflict that baseball now often feels between the most efficient and most aesthetically pleasing ways of the sport being played, but James’ career shifted baseball enormously.
He worked 16 years for the Red Sox — he was a Royals season ticket holder, and the organization letting him work for a better funded rival was another unforced error of the time — but in some ways his exclusion from the Hall of Fame is appropriate.
Because he’s always thought and operated more like an outsider, and there would be a specific flavor of humor in the establishment that spent so long resisting many of his ideas giving him the sport’s highest honor.
But he deserves it.
Not that he needs it to validate a remarkable life and career.
So, is this simply my favorite 10 athletes of all-time?
Because if so, let’s rock, with the disclaimers that this list will be laughably biased toward a specific period of history, geography, and cable availability.
1. Bo Jackson. You knew this would start here, and I know I’ve said this before, and I know it means I’m not properly balanced in many ways but I can say without exaggeration that this man I’ve never met — a man I’d prefer to never meet, because he already has a perfect place in my life — had as much influence on my life as anyone I am not directly related to.
He will always represent sports at their best to me. He was about the spectacular, about forever memories, and stretching the boundaries of what is possible. I hope those are always a central part of why I love sports.
2. George Brett. Probably self-explanatory. He was already a star by the time I became aware of baseball, and I’m not sure I understood how cool it was that one of the best 25 or so players in the history of the sport at that time played for the team I could go watch in person. We also have the same birthday.
3. Michael Jordan. If you were born basically anywhere in the 1970s or 80s and liked sports even a little bit then Jordan is probably on your list. I had the Wings poster, and the one of him flying in from the free throw line, ball cocked, look of pure confidence on his face. WGN made the NBA accessible to a lot of us back then, which meant the Bulls were sort of America’s team even before the championships.
4. Run TMC, but if we can’t induct a group then we’ll put Chris Mullin here.
My dad has always been a passionate college basketball fan but literally could not care less about the NBA. I mean, it was as if the NBA didn’t exist. He didn’t hate the NBA, didn’t complain about it, didn’t anything. I think a lot of us pick up sports from our dads, so that’s how I was until catching a Warriors game on TNT one night with Hubie Brown on the broadcast.
Honestly, I just don’t think I knew that basketball could be played like that, so fast, the ball moving, the skill outrageously high. I once won a $50 bet in high school for wearing the same Mullin jersey, Warriors shorts, and Warriors boxers to class every day for a week.
5. Sammy Sosa. Some of it was that the Cubs were my grandma’s team, a lot of it was the name, and most of it the joy that he always seemed to have on the field. We did a lot of whiffle ball and home run derby in high school and college, and I practiced that two-step hop A LOT.
Being a Hall of Fame voter now has been a real trip, separating that experience as a younger person to the nuanced and complicated and often unavoidably contradictory process of voting.
6. Derrick Thomas. I’m just not sure there was anything more intoxicating than third-and-long, Arrowhead rocking, Thomas lined up MAYBE a half-inch onsides with the opposing left tackle and everyone in the building sure he was about to bend around the edge for another sack. Mercy, the NFL was different back then.
7. Danny Manning. My mom was a teacher who was raised by a teacher, so when he said he turned down the chance to be one of the top picks of the 1987 draft because he promised his mom he’d earn his degree, he essentially became a superhero to my mom.
8. Bret Saberhagen. I have this distinct memory of watching a Royals game in 1985 and the TV announcers going on and on about Saberhagen only being 21 years old, which really stuck when they mentioned he graduated high school just three years ago. There was an older kid down the street was in high school, and it blew my mind that this guy striking everybody out on TV was only a few years older.
9. Pedro Martinez. From about 1997 to 2003 or so Pedro challenged reality of what pitchers were capable of doing at that specific time in baseball. It’s like every other pitcher was throwing BP, there just to serve up home runs as steroids and other factors spiked scoring, and Pedro was the outlier, every night throwing pitches that moved in ways you just weren’t used to seeing. I had a night class my junior year that I skipped twice because it conflicted with televised Pedro starts.
Once, I convinced some friends to drive to Kansas City for a Pedro start in 2000. He’d just struck out 10 in his last start, and the Royals had a pretty good lineup that year — this was when Sweeney drove in 144, and Damon scored 136 — but I’d convinced myself that we could see Pedro throw a no-hitter.
The Royals batted around on him in the first.
10. Craig Hodges. I know this is random, but you have no idea how many hours I spent in the driveway shooting baskets. And when Hodges got to the Bulls, my 10-year-old brain was convinced that I, too, could play with Michael Jordan if I just became a good enough shooter.
I ended up choosing sports journalism instead.
This week I’m particularly thankful for the $4 pillow at Target. I know I sometimes say the Sports Pass is the best deal in town, and I hope you subscribe, but I’m not sure we can compete with the $4 pillow.
This story was originally published December 7, 2021 at 5:00 AM.