This is the story of Darlene.

Darlene is a big Steelers fan, but she also likes every other team in the NFL except the New England Patriots.

Darlene is a big Penguins fan, but she hates every other team in the NHL.

Darlene is not a Pirates fan, makes fun of everyone who is especially me and hates baseball in general.

Darlene loves NBA players LeBron James, Tony Parker and Allen Iverson, while despising Kobe Bryant, Shaq and Steve Nash.

Darlene owns uniform shirts for Ricky Williams, Peyton Manning and Evgeni Malkin. She desires uniform shirts of Hines Ward, Willie Parker, Ben Roethlisberger and nearly every other Steeler known to man.

Just who is this Darlene?

She is the wife of yours truly and is celebrating her birthday this weekend.

Why should you care?

You should care because Darlene and women like her sacrifice every day so that sports guys like me can write about or coach the sports we love, do what we do to publicize the games we play and the athletes who thrive at them.

Darlene puts up with:

• her husband being gone most evenings and a good portion of every weekend.

• getting dinner ready nightly on a very tight time frame, just so her husband can stop in and eat between assignments.

• her husband watching sporting events on TV she has absolutely no interest in unless one of the aforementioned teams or players is involved.

Darlene has benefited somewhat from hanging out with a sports freak. She's learned how to fill out an NCAA basketball tournament bracket and routinely scores higher than me.

And when she does finish in the money, I receive none of it.

Thursday is our bowling night. Darlene and I aren't on the same team league rules prevent that and Darlene hates to lose.

Therefore, she experiences the thrill of victory whenever her team beats mine. I experience the agony of defeat for the rest of the week when my team beats hers.

Darlene knows how to keep statistics at a basketball game. I showed her as much years ago so she could keep stats for me while I took pictures of the action on the court at high school games.

I sold that arrangement as "together time." Darlene bought it for a while, until the idea of sitting home cursing out her hated pro athletes on TV became more appealing.

On occasion, I find myself drifting into Darlene's world. I became a loyal viewer of "Melrose Place" and "Dancing With the Stars" because of her.

For the most part, though, our worlds are different. Darlene works days, I work nights. Darlene watches the big TV downstairs, I watch the smaller one upstairs.

But we will dine together on her birthday no, she's not cooking and Darlene and I will be married 25 years in May 2010.

Maybe, in our case, absence does make the heart grow fonder.

As long as I don't root for New England.

John Enrietto is sports editor of the Butler Eagle.