Call the EMT’s. Get the best doctors available; this is an emergency.
Sam Mellinger, The Star’s lead sports columnist, is very sick. I feel sure he’s been feverish for several days and very little oxygen is getting to his brain. He’s a COVID-19 candidate, for sure.
Mellinger
Nothing else could explain a couple of jaw-dropping decisions he made in compiling “the 50 most influential people in KC sports history” in today’s Kansas City Star.
He got some of the obvious ones right, such as Lamar Hunt (No. 1), Ewing Kauffman (No. 2), Len Dawson (No. 5), Andy Reid (No. 6), Hank Stram (No. 12) and Tom Watson (No. 18).
But, as I perused the list, I was thunderstruck by two things:
:: Mellinger had Ned Yost, who guided the Royals to a World Series Championship in 2015 and to Game 7 of the World Series the year before, down at No. 46. He almost didn’t make the cut!
:: More outrageous, Dick Howser, who led the Royals to the 1985 World Series Championship, didn’t make the cut! Perhaps an even greater manager than Yost, Howser was “nowhere to be found.”
Let’s take a closer look at these two unforgivable miscalculations…
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Ned Yost
Yost, in Mellinger’s esteemed view, merited no better placement than between current Kansas City Chiefs’ assistant coach Eric Bieniemy (No. 45) and former Chiefs offensive lineman Will Shields (No. 47).
Is there any way Bieniemy and Shields will be remembered longer in Kansas City than the great Ned Yost?
…Consider some of those ranked well ahead of Yost:
:: The team of Neal Patterson and Cliff Illig, co-founders of Sporting KC. Somehow, they made No. 9.
:: Former Unified Government Mayor Carol Marinovich, who laid the groundwork for the conversion of I-435 and I-70 into a sporting and entertainment destination. She came in at No. 15.
:: Matt Besler, a Sporting Kansas City defender since 2009. He stood at No. 17.
:: Evelyn Gates, whom Mellinger described as a “sports official and advocate for KC-area girls sports for 45 years.” Mellinger placed her at No. 29, even though the vast majority of area residents have probably never heard of her. (I haven’t. Have you? This is a joke, right?)
Yost
Now, Marinovich and the team of Patterson and Illig certainly belong in the top 50, but their achievements don’t approach those of Yost, in my opinion. He should at least be in the top 20, maybe the top 15.
Some people contend that the manager’s role is overrated in baseball. I disagree. It’s the ultimate managerial challenge. The manager has to keep the egos in check, maintain as much harmony as possible in the clubhouse and keep the players focused and energized through the interminable 162-game season. And when it comes to the World Series, he’s got to keep his wits about him when the sporting world is watching and do whatever he can to help the players keep theirs.
Yost was incredible in his relentless optimism and equanimity. When we fans would be pulling our hair out over something like Salvadore Perez striking out on a pitch he couldn’t possibly reach, Yost would be leaning against the dugout railing, expressionless, hand never moving from his chin.
**
Dick Howser
For Mellinger to completely overlook Howser is maddening and disgraceful, not to mention insulting to Howser’s family and the tens of thousands of Royals fans who cherish the memory of Kansas City’s first-ever World Series-winning team.
That was a phenomenal achievement, promised by Ewing Kauffman and delivered by the humble and unflappable Howser.
Howser
One thing in particular stands out in my memory of Howser. I once read what Howser told the team before Game 7, when the Royals beat the St. Louis Cardinals 11-0 at Kauffman Stadium.
Howser wasn’t a bit worked up and he made no effort to fire up the team in the clubhouse. He was calm and realistic. According to relief pitcher Dan Quisenberry, now deceased, Howser said something like: “This is going to be difficult; they’re a good team. But we can do it. We’ve just got to play our game, be smart and stay focused.”
Just like Yost 30 years later, Howser’s equanimity carried the day and brought the championship flag to Kansas City.
Tragically, less than two years later, the beloved Howser was dead at age 51. He died at St. Luke’s Hospital on June 17, 1987, after battling a brain tumor for about a year.
(The closest thing I have to a personal memory of Howser is covering the 1985 World Series parade down Grand Avenue. The players and team officials rode in low-riding, classic cars, some of which caught fire after wadded up paper got stuck underneath. Howser and his wife Nancy were among those who had to bail out. I peered into the Howser car and saw a woman’s shoe, just one, in the back seat.)
**
Regarding Yost and Howser, I don’t know what Mellinger’s problem is. With Yost it’s obviously a serious miscalculation.
With Howser, perhaps the omission has to do with the fact that Mellinger, who is about 41, was about six years old when the Royals won their first World Series.
If Mellinger was 41 and not from the Kansas City area, I could better understand why he might underrate Howser. But he grew up in Lawrence and got his first newspaper job when he was about 16, so he heard plenty about the 1985 Royals and their legendary leader, Howser.
…As I said at the outset, the only logical explanation is illness. The sports editor should call 9-1-1 and have Mellinger transported to the ER. And when he’s recovered, fire him.
I no longer subscribe to The Star – would love to see the whole list and opine/number/add/delete as I see fit!! That said, Evelyn Gates is a household name in the girls youth sports arena – specifically in the volleyball world. And, KC has been an amazing volleyball Mecca over the past 10 years with a boatload going on to play D1 and gaining team national titles! I’d certainly leave Evelyn’s name right where it is on the list!
Hope all is well.
Just click on the link in Paragraph 2, Lisa, and you can see the list.
Thanks for the information about Evelyn Gates. I would stand by my statement, however, that the vast majority of area residents haven’t heard of her. And to put her above Ned Yost???
If you put Gates’ name in the KC Star’s search box (the question mark at the top of the home page), you get links to 40 stories. Most of those are about girls who were recipients of the Evelyn Gates Award.
If you put Ned Yost’s name in the search box, you get 6,713 links.
It’s making me “subscribe or sign in” to see the list – oh well. Do think the key word here is “influential”.
How about Katheryn Shields, who as JaCo Executive renegotiated the stadium leases with the Royals and Chiefs, which tied the teams to KC for 30 years.
And she eliminated the “State of the Art” maintenance clause, which Stan Kronke used to facilitate the Rams departure from St Louis years before the end of team’s lease!
She’s everybody’s hero, particularly the fire fighters.
(Addendum: After my blood stopped boiling regarding the upcoming sales-tax election on June 2, which Kathryn is responsible for, I came up with a more reasoned answer…The lease renewal was one of Kathryn’s most significant contributions when she was county executive. But if you’re going down that road, you have to think about the three-judge county court — Charles E. Curry, Alex Petrovic and Charlie Wheeler — that put the G.O. bond issue on the 1967 ballot, when voters approved funding of the Sports Complex. You’d also have to give consideration to the late William E. Clarkson Sr., the first chairman of the Jackson County Sports Complex Authority. What a great job he did in getting the citizens their money’s worth on that project!)
Sam is now scraping the bottom of the barrel—what’s next, a column about Pete Rose and the Hall of Fame?
I agree that Howser and Yost are too low, and Whitey Herzog should be on the list for establishing the Royals winning culture from mid-70s to mid-80s.
My pet peeve is Tom Watson. He is certainly one of the more famous and accomplished sports persons in KC history, but what makes him influential? All his accomplishments are personal and do not have greater meaning beyond his own bank account. Giving him credit for the local popularity of golf is a stretch, and citing his resignation of a country club membership as a momentous civic event is an insult to the 99.9% of Kansas Citians who were not at all affected by it.
I totally disagree with you about Tom Watson. The late Cotton Fitzsimmons, coach of the Kansas City-Omaha Kings NBA team — which struggled to develop a strong following — once said Watson was Kansas City’s “third franchise,” after the Royals and Chiefs and ahead of the Kings.
I agree 100% about Whitey Herzog. We never had a major league baseball team in the post-season before Whitey. He got a raw deal when he got fired.
Whitey Herzog anywhere on that list? I know Bob Cerv is before your time, and a journeyman with one great year here (1958), but he was the toast of the town starving for a winner back in the day.
Whitey Herzog probably should be in there, Steve, but Bob Cerv? I think you’ve surrendered to nostalgia. Slap some cold water on your face!
Like Lisa, I too went to paragraph 2 to see the entire list, but did not have my debit card handy for the $1.99 monthly subscription to view the list. I read no mention by you of George Brett. Did he make the list?
See the list, below…This is a full-service blog.
Where did Arnold Johnson, the guy who brought the A’s to Kansas City back in 1955, come in on the list, or for that matter, Charlie Finley, the guy who took the A’s to Oakland just when they were on the verge of greatness? My problem with all of these Most Influential and Greatest Ever lists is that the people who put them together are too easily swayed by the names of people who are their contemporaries and thus they tend to be a little biased toward them. The passage of time must be allowed to take place before people can be honestly and more fully evaluated by others. Today those on the left hate Trump and those on the right hate Obama, so neither one is going to get a fair evaluation at this time. Let the historians and sports writers 25 or 50 years from now make these sort of determinations. Yes, it must have been a slow news day in the world of sports for Sam “I am the Man” Mellinger.
Mission accomplished? The Star, which seems to be looking for signs anyone is reading it, at least got us talking about this list. I realize mine is probably a minority viewpoint. Thanks for listening.
You’re probably right about that, Gene. And it was a big undertaking, and it deserves to be talked about. At the same time, how many new subscriptions will it generate? Maybe a handful is my guess.
Where is Don Denkinger?
No. 3, right after Hunt and Kauffman.
I‘LL second that.
Was Joe McGuff on the list?
Yes, No. 40…I see now that I should have run the entire list. Not that many people take The Star any more, and without a subscription it’s nearly impossible to get to the story.
Here’s the list:
1. Lamar Hunt, 2. Ewing Kauffman, 3. Patrick Mahomes, 4. George Brett, 5. Len Dawson, 6. Andy Reid, 7. Clark Hunt, 8. Peter Vermes, 9. Neal Patterson and Cliff Illig, 10. Dayton Moore, 11. David Glass, 12. Hank Stram, 13. Bill Snyder, 14. Derrick Thomas, 15. Carol Marinovich, 16. Brett Veach, 17. Matt Besler, 18. Tom Watson, 19. Bobby Bell, 20. Carl Peterson, 21. John Sherman, 22. Marty Schottenheimer, 23. Alex Gordon, 24. Bill Self, 25, Gary Pinkel, 26. Kay Barnes, 27. Travis Kelce, 28. Salvador Perez, 29. Evelyn Gates, 30. Tony Severino, 31. Bud Lathrop, 32. Jack Bush, 33. Norm Stewart, 34. Buck O’Neil, 35. Bob Kendrick, 36.Tony Gonzalez, 37. Ron Labinski, 38. Kathy Nelson, 39. Frank White, 40. Joe McGuff, 41. Phog Allen, 42. Don Motley, 43. Tyrann Mathieu, 44. Whit Merrifield, 45. Eric Bieniemy, 46. Ned Yost, 47. Will Shields, 48. Kevin Gray, 49, Mark Donovan, 50. James Naismith.
Lots of recent names reflected. Not so sure one can put some of them on this list yet. Glad to see Kevin Gray on here – what a marvelous guy, so much contribution to this city while we headed the KC Sports Commission.
Sam took on quite a project during a time without sports. Give him credit for that and apparently, he got folks talking.
Having covered all sports in KC for nearly 40 years, I have a few quibbles.
Tom Watson, and all he did for Children’s Mercy, besides his PGA success, puts him in top 5 or 6. The glaring omission was Jack Steadman. As Mr X, he paved the way for Lamar’s moving franchise to KC, and without his push, there’s no twin stadiums or subsequent renovations.
I thoroughly respect and admire our Sporting KC folks, but they shouldn’t be ranked ahead of Stram, Carl Peterson, Marty or Bill Snyder.
Tyrann Mahieu? He’s been here a minute. Compare his impact to Buck Buchanan’s.
Whit Merrifield? A fine ball player for two 100-loss teams.
Your points about all three Royals managers are well taken. Shouldn’t be that big a gap between Andy Reid (one Super Bowl) and Ned (two World Series appearances and sterling post-season win percentage, best in baseball).
Thanks, Randy…And readers this comment is from someone who knows his stuff. Randy is a Star sports dept. veteran of at least 35 years. He retired several years ago but still writes some freelance pieces for the paper.
I agree with everything you said. Frankly, Steadman didn’t cross my mind. I think he gets underrated because he was a very tough person to deal with — a my-way-or-the-highway type guy. But that’s what Lamar loved about him. Lamar could be the good guy and the heavy was right behind him, whacking away.
And now that you’ve weighed in in such measured, rational fashion, Randy, I’m going to rescind my call for Sam to be fired and instead reduce my demand to a two-week suspension…Don’t let it happen again, pal!
Thought you’d be lobbying for Denny Mathews.
If he’d been on the list, I would have gone berserk.
Your on the wrong side of the woke crowd on this list, Mack. Get back in the dugout or I’ll run ya.
Jerry Green deserves consideration for ushering in full-time sports radio in KC. Changed sports coverage in KC. Think of the Royals and Chiefs pre and post game shows even for stations not carrying the team.
Remember, before that, you could not even get a live playoff or World Series game on the radio and probably not NFL or NBA post-season games either.
Groan…now the Star has become, once and for all, USA Today.
For what it is worth, my nomination is Charlie O.
My initial thought was the author had 2 lists; movers and shakers and players and the lists were “merged”. As I reread the article I realized the content was intentional. The article was “just wrong” for diminishing the contributions of many pioneers and inflating the value of some “new guys.” I also think Sam got tired of trying to defend his thesis and quit.