My breakfast toast looked great, if you believe two charcoal briquets are things of beauty.

I had failed to notice the gathering crisis in the kitchen, largely because I was surfing the Internet. I sought sports information. Why is Joe Mauer hot? Why does Scott Baker seem to believe a fastball down the middle is his best pitch? Has Carlos Zambrano scheduled his next temper tantrum?

Only when the toaster belched smoke like a 20th century steel mill did I suspect there may be a problem. There was my toast, blacker than Al Davis' soul. Fortunately, I had depth. Next bread in, although I swear those two pieces of wheat were strangely reluctant to get to work.

Then it dawned on me at that moment last week. I'm on vacation, but I'm still transfixed by sports. My plans to get away from it all were, well, toast.

I had thought about this now and then when I stepped away from my job in the past. Sports is a welcome distraction for those who want to dodge the corporate crosshairs for a while. But what about a sports writer? His job involves watching others battle above the rim or under the shadow of the goalposts. What does he do? How does he escape?

The quick answer is, I don't. Sure, I've tried to back away in the past with mixed success. I'll read. Or I'll listen to music and try to figure out exactly what Bob Dylan was talking about in 1965. That's a challenge.

Invariably, though, I end up back in the sports world. Maybe I'm not seated behind a laptop, but I'm there, often in a very active way.

Take the Sunday afternoon I spent in Walford. My son plays for a town baseball team there, so I went down to watch him play. What better way to kick back and relax for a few hours?

My relaxation period ended somewhere around the third inning, when Pete motioned to me from his dugout.

"Do you have your glove?" he asked.

"Sure," I said to him.

Privately, I said, "Oh, oh."

He needed to warm up, but Walford didn't have a lot of extra players on the bench. So I became his catcher of sorts.

Now, Pete didn't throw hard. He knows the consequences of firing pitches at a middle-aged set of eyes and reflexes. As evidence I have the stitches in my chin. Still, he could have been throwing a beach ball underhanded and I would have been a little edgy.

I made it through our session with no injuries, but at that point, sports was no longer a distraction. I became focused, locked in, on every throw my son made.

Someone could have dropped $1 million at my feet, and I would not have taken my eyes away from the baseball, Well, I might have reached for my wallet, but you get the picture.

Away from the diamond, I didn't watch much sports on TV. Yet, when Fran Tarkenton started lobbing verbal grenades at Brett Favre, I snapped to attention.

Tarkenton, the former Viking quarterback, ripped the old Packer in a series of interviews. Asked about Favre playing for Minnesota, Tarkenton said, "I kind of hope it happens, so he can fail."

That was not the smartest or classiest thing he's said in his life. Another quote, though, really jolted me.

Said Tarkenton, "I can't put my arms around this as a Vikings fan. I was born a Viking, I retired a Viking and I will die a Viking.

"And in the spirit of sport - I don't like to use the word hate - but (the Packers) are the enemy, are they not? And I want to embrace the icon Brett Favre to come over here and play for my team? He's a Packer and should be a Packer."

You can disagree with Tarkenton's stance on Favre as a Viking quarterback. But his passion about his old team almost burns the air.

So maybe there's no escape. Living in the sports world means you care, sometimes too much. But that passion is always there, whether you're a writer on vacation or a Vikings quarterback 30 years past his final game.

I just wonder if Tarkenton ever burns his toast.