Anything to talk about? Oh, right. Everything to talk about.

5 months, 2 weeks ago

Anything to talk about? Oh, right. Everything to talk about.

Sam Mellinger

I wish you could’ve seen the look on Randy Covitz’s face when we walked into this restaurant we’d been hearing about last night and it turned out to be a night club, complete with two large ladies grinding on each other, neon laser lights, and a guy passed out in the next booth over.

I mean, we left very quickly. But I wish you could’ve seen Randy’s face when we told him it looked good.

OK, well, an absolutely packed weekend so let’s just get to it.

The Royals made a defining trade, sending four prospects to Tampa Bay for starting pitchers James Shields and Wade Davis. To me, they gave up too much or got too little and made the trade a bit too early.

I always thought the Royals’ best chance of winning would be around 2014 or 2015 — every critical player on the roster is under club control for at least that long, and the youngest ones will have a few more seasons to mature.

So based on that, I’m uncomfortable sacrificing pieces that could help in 2015 and beyond — Wil Myers will be 24, and Jake Odorizzi 25 — for a frontline pitcher who will hit the free agent market after the 2014 season. I always thought the best plan would be a package that did NOT include Myers for R.A. Dickey, then you have Myers take over in right field early in the season, and you’ve improved in two spots. That’s the course I was hoping the Royals would take.

But I will say this: I respect the hell out of the trade.

I respect that the Royals are trying to win, finally, now. I respect that they’re willing to be bold. I respect that they just made their team better, and without giving up anyone who’s played a meaningful big league game.

Also — and this needs to be said, especially by me — I respect that David Glass has OK’d a payroll that now projects just over $80 million.

So I have mixed feelings about this. There is risk on each side, of course. Myers is not yet Mike Trout. Odorizzi may be a right-handed Bruce Chen. All those innings might be about to catch up to Shields. Wade Davis may be a really nice reliever and a lousy starter, and the Royals have plenty of nice relievers.

Anyway, I guess I land here: in an era when teams tend to overvalue prospects, I would’ve expected the Royals to do better. But I also could very well be wrong.

And I do love that they tried it.

The crappy Chiefs lost to the slightly less crappy Browns, and if they played that game 100 times you got the feeling the Chiefs would be lucky to win once.

The Chiefs’ heroic — and I try to never use that word with sports, but it fits, particularly with Romeo Crennel, Scott Pioli and Gary Gibbs in that parking lot — reaction to the Jovan Belcher murder-suicide is something Kansas City fans will remember forever.

But like the man says here, we have to get back to football, and this is a broken roster playing to less than it’s potential. The NFL moves fast, and the Chiefs are falling further behind.

Collin Klein finished third in the Heisman voting, and if you care, here was my ballot:

Manti Te’o
Klein
Johnny Manziel

All three are deserving, so I think anyone — and there have been plenty — who says any particular way of voting on this is ridiculous is, well, ridiculous.

Te’o is, to me, the best player in the sport and it helps that he’s the heart and soul of the No. 1 team in the country. That a defense-only guy has never won the award before is more due to voters’ lack of guts than anything else.

Manziel had the best numbers, and the best moment (the win at Alabama) and a cool story and nickname for people to get behind. It’s not hard to understand why he won.

I put Klein ahead of Manziel because I didn’t think Klein’s game at Baylor was any worse than Manziel’s game against LSU, Klein was a bigger chunk of K-State’s offense than Manziel was of Texas A&M’s, K-State has been better than A&M, Klein was better against the better teams than Manziel, rushed for more touchdowns, came to embody what an entire program was about and, there is a character clause in the Heisman voting guidelines, and, if I’m being perfectly honest, just being exposed to K-State more than A&M this year probably had something to do with it, too.

But, again. It’s hard to have a big problem with Manziel winning. Guy had a hell of a season.

And besides, the Heisman was never what I was going to remember Klein for anyway.