Hearne: Time for Star’s Sam Mellinger to Reinvent Himself

I take it back…

Remember a couple years back when I wrote about how promising new Kansas City Star sports columnist Sam Mellinger was? That Sam the Man was no sham.

Which at a falling Star was no small feat. Especially given that Sam I Am was heir apparent to the newspaper’s twin sports peaks, Jason Whitlock and Joe Posnanski.

Remember those dudes?

Whitlock and Posnanski weren’t perfect, but they played the role in the sports pages of the Star and in their sundry flirtations with sports radio stations WHB and 610 Sports.

Whitlock became the Clown Prince of Kansas City sports.

By manufacturing feuds with big shots like former Kansas City Chiefs main man Carl Peterson; kissing up to KU basketball deity Bill Self; pimping thin-skinned readers about racism and hip-hop music and culture; pretending former footballer Jeff George was the second coming of Joe Namath and the Chiefs should sign him; courting strippers; extolling a love of Gates Bar-B-Q; and bragging about his mother’s soul food.

I leave anything out?

JoePo majored in overwrought, flowery, wordy sports screeds.

Unfortunately while Jolting Joe had a loyal following and won his share of writing awards, he was gutless. So if you didn’t have the time or the depth of interest in sports to wade through his endlessly long masterpieces, he was easy for many to overlook.

All of that said, the pair had comparatively massive local followings, the likes of which Mellinger and that long-in-the-tooth Gregorian character the Star shlepped in from St. Louis, would kill to replicate.

Early on, I thought Mellinger had a shot – not of eclipsing – but at least measuring up to his forebears.

Far less a bullshitter than Jason and nowhere near as effusive and JoePo – not to mention well over a decade their juniors – the sky was the limit for Mellinger and I thought he got off to a good start.

Ah, but keeping the flame a-flicker is far easier said than done.

That Gregorian dude

Because in a world where pretty much all truly good things come to an end, it didn’t take long for Mellinger’s columns to morph into toothless exercises in well written but uninspiring sports prose. Which may explain why he’s the last of his generation at 18th and Grand not to follow Whitlock, Posnanski and however many others into the world of free agent sport writing in larger or national markets. He’s seems far more comfortable here in his role largely as a homer.

So here’s the deal.

Given my past plaudits, I’m hoping the Sam-inator will take my criticism to heart and allow it to serve as a wakeup call.

Because damn near any good writer/sports groupie can mail in the caliber of writing and reporting Sam’s been dishing up for the past year or longer. However when you’re what passes for the main perpetrator of edgy writing is in the pages of a dying newspaper, you gotta bring your A Game.

Not just mail it in.

You can’t be timid – or at least you best not be. You need to fire up that chainsaw and pretend you’re sitting on a barstool next to some other pissed off local sports zealot dishing out bodily harm…which takes guts because then you have to call those same people you just trashed, act as nice as you can be and move on to your next column. Again, that’s easier said than done.

Complacency is the enemy of good, edgy, critical writing and if one isn’t careful, you’ll walk into the men’s bathroom at 18th and Grand one day, gaze into the mirror and find Charles Gusewelle staring back at you. And that’s the last thing Chiefs and Royals fans wanna have to put up with – public television style sports reporting and writing.

You know you’re in trouble when you find yourself in lockstep with a newspaper still fumbling around online trying to hustle leftover copies of Crowned! Royals World Series Book 2015 with come ons like, “Limited Supply! $13.95 includes shipping!”

That in the wake of the Royals letting slip or trading away its key players from said World Series team and a highly suspect 2017 season soon to unfold.

See, it’s OK for that Gregorian cat to fumble around like it’s still 1976 – he’s well past his prime – and just playing out his string waiting for his newsroom sheet cake sendoff retirement bash.

Samsonite, on the other hand, has far farther to go before contemplating a Walmart greeter position. And if he hopes to sustain a writing career schticking local and/or national sports, he needs to snap out of these doldrums  he’s in and think about reinvention. To bid adieu to mailing it in while speaking softly and carrying a super small stick.

Those kingsize sticks don’t cost much more than the wee ones and they’ll carry Mellinger a whole lot farther in the game of life.

Nuff said?