Locker Room:I've often thought of imposing some sort of toll charge or tax on people who poke me in the chest and tell me my lowly vocation is less a job than a prolonged holiday, an enviable existence of assisted living and fabulous expense accounts.

It is true that being a pencil jockey is marginally less hard work than drawing the long shift in, say, a salt mine. I'm not so myopic that I can't see that, but does the salt miner have to endure the same worrying corrosion of morale you get from writing about big-time sports? He does not.

We sports hacks are among the wretched of the earth and in the next life - for all our meekness - we won't inherit that earth. We won't even get time for a rewrite on our contribution. Sportswriting isn't just a drip, drip, drip of disappointment and disillusion; it's having to put on a brave face on it. It's like being in the PDs only less private.

Back when I was seven years of age I foolishly fell in love with a man called Sniffer. That early infatuation with Allan Clarke (the delicate Leeds centre forward not the priapic pol) led to me being sold into slavery as a fan of Leeds United.

Now in the summer that Leeds became financially bankrupt and long after they became morally bankrupt it is grotesque to have to even think about them, let alone to admit having had a relationship with them which would have seen me happily having John Giles's babies if Eamon Dunphy hadn't got there first. Being a Leeds fan should have given me a fairly resilient constitution but sometimes it's just hard to cope with sport.

Having covered several of those bonfires of the vanities which are Olympic-bidding wars, I thought I had heard it all. I am, however, still digesting the implications of a casual comment I heard on the radio a short time back after Ireland had happily won the rights to host next year's Gay Rugby World Cup. Apparently to win we had to beat off Sydney. Nobody batted an eyelid, apart no doubt, from Sid himself.

Le Tour, meanwhile, continues to surpass even the expectations of the most devoted lovers of Grand Guignol. The peloton rolls through France posing as a repertory company performing a deliciously amoral and debauched version of The Little Shop of Pharmaceutical Horrors.

The headline Tour de Farce has been pedalled into a state of exhaustion beyond the refreshing reaches of EPO or blood doping. But some variant is needed to describe scenes unfolding on the west coast of America, where the obscene, pathos-ridden Posh 'n' Becks two-hander is still gulling the over-caffeinated locals.

Up the coast, Barry Bonds, a surly slugger whose muscle mass has increased by 35 per cent over the past few years, a time during which he has been heavily implicated in the Balco scandal, continues to claim the two things are unconnected. He hovers one home run away from equalling baseball's most revered record: the career homers figure of Hank Aaron. And they're getting the ticker tape ready.

Meanwhile, across in Atlanta, the town which bought the Olympic Games and got a free Michelle Smith for its trouble, the local quarterback Michael Vick (Vick nicknamed himself Superman but his more amusing monicker is Ron Mexico, the name it is alleged he used while visiting clinics for the treatment of genital herpes) is among four men indicted by a federal grand jury for felony and misdemeanour charges involving a six-year dog-fighting venture called - this is so cute - the "Bad Newz Kennels".

There are not many cute, uplifting stories in the dog-fighting world (or indeed the NFL, the only league in the world with as many cons playing in it as pros) but the allegations here involve the execution of losing and underperforming dogs by hanging, electrocution, drowning and shooting (all measures players' unions would whine about if coaches tried them with underperfoming stars). The feds accuse Vick of direct involvement.

Outrage over animal abuse is justified but should it overshadow so comprehensively the voices questioning the Beijing Olympics, which will unfold next year as a great and colourful circus while human-rights abuses and China's stance on Darfur are forgotten in an orgy of commercialism and drugs.

That's the difficulty with working to cover sport: it's toxic. The more time you invest in trailing around after big-time sport the more emotionally bankrupt you will be at the end of the day. If your day's work involves not just trailing around after big-time sport but also wearing a short skirt and tassles and shouting, "Ra! Ra! Ra!" down the phone line to a copytaker then you don't really want to look yourself in the eye in the mirror when you get up out of bed early in the afternoon.

But wait! Suddenly, like manna, a little hail of things falls from the sky to keep you going: a sequence of events which reassure you that sport has some value and retains some values.

The sheer excellence and excuse for optimism of Dublin's minor and under-21 hurlers this year. Damien Fitzhenry trundling up the park to drive that free home against Tipp on Saturday afternoon. Niall Quinn and Roy Keane and the quixotic heroism of a club trying to do the right thing in the Babylon of the Premiership

And best of all, Padraig Harrington. Eight days later there is no space left for new tributes, garlands or encomiums to be left on Padraig's doorstep. Yet so epochal and uplifting were the events in Carnoustie that we feel justified in adding to the mountain of goodwill which has changed the landscape of his life.

Whether you love golf or view it as an incurable condition of middle-class, middle-aged male existence, there is something to celebrate in Padraig. At his father's funeral one speaker said it had been Paddy Harrington's wish his own sporting achievements in the red of Cork would not be considered. So they spoke about the man.

Not many of us could make such a request in confidence that the person we are could be judged favourably when stripped bare of achievements and work. Paddy Harrington's idea said as much about his son as it did about himself, just as Padraig's demeanour and ideals say as much about his father as any fine speech could.

If there is a current sportsperson you would want your kids to model themselves on it would be Padraig Harrington.

Think of the dignity with which he yielded up that large pay cheque at The Belfry some years ago when it was noticed - as he went into the last round leading by five strokes - that he had accidentally forgotten to sign his own card from the first round.

Or the moral courage he showed later that year when in fading light at the US Open in Pebble Beach he accidentally touched his ball while surveying a putt. Not a soul noticed, but character is what you show when nobody is watching and you call a shot on yourself without hesitation.

Then there is his inspirational work rate, his dedication in the matter of getting it right. He is the evidence you'd point kids toward when the game they love isn't loving them back. Work. Work. Work.

And as anybody who has ever had to deal with him professionally will know, there is also his tremendously obliging nature, his willingness to be engaged by any half-intelligent question and the rare courtesy he offers of always returning an honest and well-thought-out answer.

A few years ago, on the basis of a slight professional acquaintance, this column rang him to ask would he contribute to a forum on sports excellence we were running for St Vincent's GAA club, and as the phone was ringing there was a sudden loss of nerve, as in, "what the f*** are you doing asking one of the world's top 10 golfers to give up an entire Saturday aftenoon? Especially for no fee."

Padraig answered, chatted, never mentioned this column's antipathy to the Ryder Cup and when asked about the forum, just enquired where and when, checked his diary and said no problem, he'd be there.

Carnoustie was more than a fix for a nation of big-event junkies; it was a triumph for the faith in values and sport as something which doesn't develop your character but exposes it.

We were up in O'Toole's ground in the pouring rain when the last putt dropped. Not a place where you expect to see so many smiling faces greet the news of a championship win for Ballyboden, but that's the measure of the man.