When it comes to reading the newspaper, I tend to leave out all the sections that highlight “bad” news: News, Business, International, and frequently, Metropolitan. When I’m done sorting “bad” news sections from “good” news pages, I’m left with Sports and Arts/Style. Probably, to most people it would seem I get very little “real” news at all from my daily New York Times. Of course I beg to differ.

Sports and Art are the core of my being and the principle sources of my income, after all.

When you’re a New York sports fan, you’re not used to getting bad news. Mediocre news. Tragic news. Great news. Yes, all of those. But not bad news. And certainly not bad news on a regular basis about all your favorite teams at once. It’s one of the great advantages to being in a metro area with a professional sport franchise in every division in every league — even when one team in one sport is having a losing streak, another team in another (and sometimes the same) sport is on a winning run.

But then Mariano Rivera twisted his knee.

It was the domino that started the cascade. Sure, a day later the front page of the section ran with that quintessential photo of Mo running to the field from the bullpen and the headliner quote: “I’m coming back. Write it down in big letters.”

But that was the only spark of good news.

Rangers Fall Flat

Bats Go Quiet as Yankees Lose Again

For Rangers, Questions and Negative Answers

End is Likely for Knicks

Back when the Knicks Won One

I felt like someone had swapped out my Sunday Sports for the week’s Wall Street Recap. Were these articles secretly about Enron and Goldman Sachs? Because surely, they couldn’t be about my Yanks and Rangers!?

Luckily, by Tuesday, thanks to an overtime goal and 10 runs in Kansas City, the sports section is once again safe to read and chock full of good news.