Vahe Gregorian: Friend and colleague Sam Mellinger has been a teammate in the trenches
Certain forces in our lives can feel like magic, can’t they?
If you’re lucky like me, you had that in your parents. And you get it with your siblings and wife and extended family and forever friends and many colleagues over the years.
But some beautiful things come almost out of nowhere, too, with no real way to know how they’d work out.
And as much as I had admired and liked Sam Mellinger from across the state, I was only guessing what it would be like to become his wingman as a sports columnist at The Star in 2013.
What if it turned out that (despite all indications otherwise) he was territorial? Had an ego? Or just wasn’t so fun up close, day-to-day? What if he wasn’t as kind and empathetic as he appeared from our occasional times together and in his brilliant writing?
Instead, working in concert with Sam became one of the profound joys of my life.
And as excited as I am for him to embark on this new adventure with the Royals, I’ll acutely miss being tethered to him in this unique way … even if there definitely will be more nachos and spicy snack mix available at various sports venues near us now.
As fulfilling and enjoyable as our jobs mostly are, nights and weekends and deadlines and travel and sudden breaking news and scrambling for ideas can be stressful. And that can be compounded, even ruinous, if you aren’t in harmony with the people you work closest with.
But all of that also can be soothed, even harnessed, when you work with people whose judgment you trust and whose talents and work ethic you cherish — and all the more so when you know that person unfailingly looks out for you.
You can’t demand that kind of feeling, maybe can’t even really hope for it, but, somehow, there it was with Sam.
It also helps if he’s maybe the funniest person you’ve ever met: I don’t believe anyone has ever made me laugh as much as Sam has over the last eight-plus years, from his quick-witted observations to his self-deprecating stories to numerous inside-ish references.
(“Cute kid” … “make fun of glove thing” … one of us almost running out of gas in Manhattan and realizing the other guy was just in front of him on the road … one of us not realizing the other guy’s hotel bathtub was overflowing when he was trying to steam a shirt … and other airheaded things we’ve both done, etc.)
Sitting between Sam and the ever-clever Sam McDowell, another perfect teammate, at Chiefs games this season was the best seat in the house. Any house.
Sam liked to say I was the thoughtful columnist and he was the goofy one, often pointing to the day I was asking Alex Smith about wearing a safety pin on his shirt after the Chiefs won at Carolina in 2016 … while he was asking punter Dustin Colquitt to critique cornerback Marcus Peters’ form after he booted a ball into the stands. In one of our hundreds of text messages to each other, he once joked that he was inclined to get that day’s sports front framed because of the contrast.
But the truth is that ideas like that reflected his uncanny imagination, not to mention thriving sense of humor, and that Sam could write as thought-provokingly and poignantly as anyone when he went in that direction. And it seemed to me he always knew which way to go. Because no one understood this audience better.
Indeed, he has been THE voice of the Kansas City sports scene as the consummate columnist, so versatile and so nimble-minded as to be able to write elegantly with remarkable speed.
“Insta-reaction” is what he called his posts immediately at the end of Chiefs game. But those would hold up as the best and final work of many writers. And I’ll simply never understand how he could produce the volumes and volumes that went into Mellinger Minutes every week on top of everything else he was doing.
That was magic, too, I guess. Like the fact that Sam is just one of those people whose vibes make you know everything will work out when you’re around him.
Not long ago when we were returning from somewhere, our connecting flight was going to be really tight through the vast Dallas-Fort Worth airport. I didn’t stress like I normally would, though, because I was with Sam … so of course it would work out.
Everyone that worked with him was better for it and grateful for it, too. But I suppose I feel especially blessed because of not just how I learned from him every day, as a professional and as a person, but because how he treated me made a crucial difference in this job being gratifying or becoming … what have I done?
When I was considering leaving St. Louis after 25 years at the Post-Dispatch to come here for a columnist’s role, I was particularly drawn by the chance to work with my longtime confidant (and, in fact, one of my idols) Blair Kerkhoff and otherwise convinced by our dear friend Terez Paylor slamming his fist on a table and greatly intrigued by the chance to work directly with Sam.
We spoke candidly about what it would be like before I came, and I’ll always remember his “pod-nuh?” text after I accepted the offer. And that was, somehow seamlessly, how it was from Day One to now.
We must have covered, I don’t know, 250 or so events together among hundreds and hundreds of times we might each have wished to write about the same topic.
And never once, somehow, did we have a conflict. Literally never once. Not even what Sam liked to call a pillow fight.
During a game as we waited to sort out what made sense for each of us to delve into, one of us might get an urge to write something in particular and then the dance would begin.
“Hey, I’m feeling kind of Mahomes-ie, but what are you thinking?”
“Cool, I see a way to do X.”
Dozens of emails or texts between us use terms like, “would it mess with you if …?”
If there was something he could tell I really wanted to do that might overlap with something he was doing, he’d tell me he wanted me to have “a free mind” and go another direction.
Somehow, we just felt when one of us should step back and one of us ought to step up, which only really works if you feel like the other person is as fair and generous as Sam is.
What a gift. Magic.
Maybe this feeling was all magnified by getting to share in a rich time in Kansas City sports, too, with two World Series and two Super Bowls among the greatest highlights with endless tales in themselves.
Traveling back from the last Super Bowl, alas, was one of the hardest days either of us (and so many other colleagues) ever has known. I was at the airport in Tampa when I learned that Terez had died.
Sam had arrived but I hadn’t seen him yet. So I called him to tell him I needed to find him right away to tell him something. When I saw his face, I could barely get out the words and we just stood there in shock with our hands on each other’s shoulders.
But it was comforting that we were traveling back together, and it felt the same way a few weeks later when we shared the journey to Terez’s funeral in Detroit.
We’ve also each lost parents (Sam’s mother died, as did both my parents) and other close relatives (Jay Harker, the father of Sam’s delightful wife, Katie) over these last few years, and I sure hope Sam feels like I was as there for him as he was for me.
Because who could ask for a better friend than someone who offers just the right tender and loving thoughts of consolation and remembers stories you told about your parents … and even can quote your mother’s sayings?
So now Sam is heading to the Royals and will work there with another of the people I admire most, former general manager-turned-president Dayton Moore.
Among all the things I’ve absorbed from Dayton over the years is what I consider his prime directive:
First, be a great teammate … and everything else will follow.
Take it from someone who knows, Royals: You’re getting the best.
This story was originally published December 14, 2021 at 10:46 AM.