Ah, to be back in the sports department.

Many of us got our start in the newspaper business in the sports department, covering local games. It's still a section that has the most passionate, devoted following of readers.

And this is the biggest weekend of the year for your newspaper sports pages. It's the one that gives sports editors gray hair, if they have any left.

It starts with the Final Four. The men's semifinal games are Saturday and the final game is Monday night. As a sports editor, you have to run "advances" all week telling readers what's coming, and then have coverage of the games in the Sunday paper. (Even though the second game should be over by 9 p.m., it's always hectic to get it in the paper because that's also the night of daylight savings time so we lose an hour of delivery time for your carriers.) This year, for us, it's an even bigger story because we have a local team, UCLA, in the Final Four and we have sports columnist David Lassen covering the event. (We hadn't planned to send a local writer ... and then UCLA up and made it.)

Then you have the women's Final Four. They used to be covered in agate only on the Scoreboard page. But they have passionate followers too. Those games are Sunday and Tuesday. Star sports writer Rhiannon Potkey is in Boston and will be writing about those games for us.

This weekend is also the start of the baseball season. So sports pages are giving you advances on the upcoming season. For us, that means a preview on the National League (we ran that today), a preview on the American League (we'll run that tomorrow) and previews on the Dodgers and Angels (we'll run those Sunday) and then opening day is Monday and we'll be covering it.

Then next week is the Masters. It's the biggest golfing event of the year. Star golf writer Bob Buttitta is going back to cover for us again this year and he'll have an advance on the tournament that we'll run in Sunday's paper.

And the MLS season is also kicking off next week, so we'll look to run advances on soccer.

Plus, of course, there's the "usual stuff," which includes coverage of the NBA, NHL and all our local college and high school teams.

As you might guess, sports editors tend to not grant vacation requests over this weekend.