Red Smith and Daisuke Matsuzaka's translator

There's an odd give and take to writing about -- and, by proxy, watching -- sports for a living.

(Something resembling a living, anyway ...)

You get into the business after reading Red Smith's descriptions of Wrigley Field, or seeing Grantland Rice elevate Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden into famine, pestilence, destruction and death. The events are history, the teams are institutions, the players are bigger than life; the writers make them that way. The writers. Taking what every man, woman and child eats and breathes, condensing it, synthesizing a little and turning out canon on the boys of summer. They see what all want to see but few get to, their import magnified daily on newspaper pages and in the minds of thousands who live and die with the games on which they are the ultimate arbiter. World Series, Super Bowls and Finals -- with a capital "F" -- are their offices.

Real life is different. Reporters start by covering the "little" stuff: Prep sports, college action and the odd minor league game. Trips to NFL training camps and promotional appearances by Jim Palmer -- no kidding -- seem like treats, rather than the chores they are to the old pros.

Eventually, though, the "little" stuff becomes the big stuff. It's the high school games and alternative features that keep people turning the pages, not the re-hashed wire reports that a sad majority of big four (five?) coverage has become. It's the always-accessible Mount Lebanon High School and East Stroudsburg University and New England Revolution players and coaches that give the original stories, not just Daisuke Matsuzaka's unintelligible (but still quoted ad nauseam) translator.

They make sports sections and websites special and unique. They deserve to be covered professionally and fully, and to know how to deal with those doing the covering. Over the coming months, I'll try to give that and more in this space.

Because every game is special.

Because, to someone, every game is a Super Bowl.