About 15 minutes after learning Mel Daniels had passed away, it sunk in. And I started crying.
Mel was that kind of guy.
Larger than life. A fighter. A poet. Tough. Sensitive. A man with a steel trap handshake and a soft heart. The kind of guy you couldn't help but love, even if he drove you crazy sometimes with passionate ramblings that kept you on the phone for an hour.
Pardon my rambling, but I'm writing this with a million thoughts racing through my head, and don't know where to start. We journalists are supposed to remain dispassionate and maintain distance from the people we cover, but what the hell, Mel was retired when I got to know him and I didn't cover his playing career.