For 40 years, John Mehno didn't miss a Pittsburgh Pirates home game. John attributed the streak to "good health, a solid work ethic, and limited social options" in his characteristic wit and rule-of-three format that he would use in his popular annual end-of-the-year quiz. Here is a sample quiz question from 2014:

If you can't get any information, it's because:
a. The library is closed.
b. Your Internet connection is faulty.
c. You're at Mike Tomlin's Tuesday press conference.

John graduated from Ambridge High School and attended Penn State Beaver for two years. John started his sportswriting career at age 14 writing for professional wrestling magazines, which led to a job writing press releases for wrestling promoter Gene Dargan. Later, for the Beaver County Times, John covered Penguins hockey and had a weekly commentary page from 1980 to 2015. For the Altoona Mirror from 1983 to 2019, John contributed columns, blog posts, and coverage of the Pirates, Steelers and Penguins. In 2018, the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association awarded John first place in the sports/outdoor column category of the Keystone Press Awards for his column about Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney.

John authored two books: The Chronicle of Baseball: A Century of Major League Action (2000), and The Best Pittsburgh Sports Arguments (2007). John's freelancing career resulted in his work appearing in numerous venues, such as the Pittsburgh Sports Report, the Washington Observer-Reporter, the Uniontown Herald-Standard website, and Steel City Sports. John was the Pirates correspondent for The Sporting News for more than ten years, and he published Pirates notes in USA Today, worked for United Press International, and had thousands of assignments with the Associated Press covering professional Pittsburgh sports teams, Pitt football, Pitt basketball, and Duquesne basketball. John's bylines appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Dallas Morning News, the New York Daily News, and the Washington Post. John spent a year as the sports information director for Carnegie Mellon University, appeared on radio talk shows such as "Drive Time Sports" on WJAS-AM, freelanced pop culture writing for Zoo World, and reported for Billboard magazine.

John died March 14, 2019, at age 64. John was remembered as "one of the greats in our business" by friend and fellow Beaver County Sports Hall of Fame inductee Ron Cook and was remembered by Altoona Mirror managing editor Neil Rudel as "a lovable curmudgeon" who was "historical and hysterical". John is survived by his sister, Linda Mehno Soldressen.