I am lousy at staying away from the UT.

Some people who know me -- most, if I am honest -- do not understand my affinity for this site. People who do not know each other well in real life and in many cases have never met feel such personal involvement? It makes no rational sense.

But we do. We know each other's home towns, our children's names, our political affiliations, our likes and dislikes.

This is a long-winded preamble to a tribute to Al Michaels, who is doing his usual stellar work at the winter games. Sometimes we don't appreciate people as much as we should. He is covering the games around the clock with apparently indefeasible lack of sleep. He is awesome.

My first intro to Al was when he was a radio announcer for the SF Giants. That was a pretty big gig for a kid from Brooklyn. At the time I drove regularly up the California coast to San Francisco on business at Safeway.. On lucky drives I was able to catch Al calling Giants games on the radio. He was no celebrity then, just another another baseball fan.