SportsTurf provides current, practical and technical content on issues relevant to sports turf managers, including facilities managers. Most readers are athletic field managers from the professional level through parks and recreation, universities.
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/714252
www.stma.org September 2016 | SportsTurf 31 with no experience? "I wrote the Brewers many letters, followed with more letters and phone calls, to express my sincere interest to be an intern on the crew. I was thrilled when they hired me and gave me the opportunity," Mellor says. After he graduated from Ohio State with a dual major in horticulture and sports turf management, the Brewers created a full-time position for him. He had fi nally earned a job in baseball. In 1995, Mellor and the crew were resodding the Brewers fi eld at the old County Stadium (the facility was replaced by Miller Park in 2000). As he stood with a rake in his hand on the warning track, he heard the sound of a car engine. He knew the gates of the stadium were open to allow for sod trucks and equipment to move freely. But the sound got louder. He looked up and saw a car coming right at him. He put his hands up and yelled for the lady driving the car to stop. She stepped on the gas and came straight at him. His body hit the windshield, bounced to the ground. The driver lapped the fi eld and came at him again, swerved and missed him by inches. He later learned she'd had a history of mental illness and was under the delusion that she was a stunt driver in a movie. One more trauma would hit Mellor hard. His brother Terry and his wife lived on a lake south of Milwaukee, and Mellor and his family would often go to visit. In July 1998, Mellor and his family spent the weekend with Terry and his family at the lake. "We went fi shing and had a wonderful weekend. On that Sunday, we said our normal goodbyes, saying hey, I'll see you later. He gave me a hug." On Tuesday evening, his sister-in-law called to say that Terry had died suddenly. He was 43 years old. More than a decade later, Mellor received a service dog to help him with the nagging injuries following the car accidents. Born in Slovakia, the dog is named Drago. He goes everywhere with Mellor and is a constant fi xture at Fenway. Terry often joked that if he died, he'd come back as the family dog. The day after Drago arrived, Mellor took him to the vet and he learned that Drago was born on Terry's birthday. How is it possible that Mellor could endure not one but two horrifi c episodes of being hit purposefully by someone driving a car, recover from his brother's sudden passing, and heal through more than 40 surgeries to repair the damage to his body? Not very well, it turns out. For 29 years, he suffered nightmares every single night. Even the smell McDonald's French fries could trigger a fl ashback. Still, he suffered alone, never expressing his physical pain or sharing his mental strain because he didn't want to burden his family. To deal with the nightmares and the pain, he often isolated himself. Through it all his wife, Denise, and their two daughters, Cacky and Tori, stood by him through every surgery, From Fenway Park