A little blue bird told me it was NSJD

Opinion by WILLIAM WILCZEWSKI

Whilst trolling the Twittersphere—where I find many dumb comments to make fun of for my columns—I discovered that July 2 is National Sports Journalist Day.

Like most things on the InterWeb, I’m not 100 percent sure it was true, but it did get me thinking: Why not, we (well, I mean the Royal we), deserve such an honor.

Why not?

Everyone and everything else seems to get a day, so why not the hardest-working folks in the media.

I know, I know, I’m going to get a lot of complaints from the side of the newsroom that gets all the functioning light bulbs, better air-conditioning flow and is closest to the break room. In fact, that’s the side of the newsroom I sit in right now, but that’s beside the point.

The point—the thing I seldom make—however, is that your sports reporters and editors should not go underappreciated at the office or in the field, where they spend 90 percent of their time when they’re not …

1. Driving around the state.
2. Staying in hotels cheaper than Miley Cyrus, and
3. Eating cold pizza and burritos in the wee hours of the morning after just barely meeting deadline on the next day’s story that everyone should buy the paper for.

Glamorous, huh?

Not exactly, but that what these folks do on a day-in and day-out basis.

Sure, you usually see them just “lounging around” at your ballgame “without a care in the world” and probably think to yourself, “Look at that lucky stiff. He (or she) didn’t even have to buy a ticket. Must be nice.”

Yes, yes it is, but make no mistake about it.

A price is paid in the end, hence …

1. The sputtering car that looks like something from Mad Max.
2. The twisted pretzel aching back courtesy of Bob’s Motel, and
3. The bloodshot eyes and a cholesterol count that comes with a calculator, via the aforementioned diet that makes every one of their physicians wag that pointer finger like it’s going out of style.

If done, correctly, though, this usually translates into wonderful, majestic prose about …

1. How or why the home team won or lost the game.
2. That amazing feature story about why or how your Little Johnny or Little Jane earned that coveted MVP trophy for the third year in a row, or
3. Columns like these, that hopefully make you remember that the grass is always greener on the other side, because—press credential or not—every sports journalist out there is paying a price for what they do, which is bringing YOUR wonderful story to OUR wonderful world.

Mind you, though, we don’t mind.

We love what we do. That’s why we do it.

In fact, we’ve all forgotten what warm pizza tastes like, anyway … and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Wilczewski can be reached at wwilczewski@havasunews.com.