I really don't spend all my time thinking about hockey or sports these days, even though I'm posting about the sports world again this time.

But I found out last night that a sportscaster in Calgary died of leukemia on Wednesday. He was only 45.

He used the moniker "Joe Sports," and weirdly, I was thinking of him just a few days ago (maybe on Wednesday), wondering if he was still in Calgary and still using that name, and which station he was on these days. He started out on the radio station I listened to as my morning show.

I heard some reference to him on Hockey Night in Canada last night, but didn't know if he'd been injured or what had happened, so I went googling. Since I've been away in Toronto since early 2000, I had no idea he'd been diagnosed with leukemia early in 2005, and had been writing about his experiences in the Calgary Herald ever since.

But now I know his real name: Collin Smith. He was a fairly devout Mormon (even though he did sports-related stuff on Sundays!) who had been married to the love of his life for 23 years, and who had four kids.

The accounts of his life mentioned how he'd started on CJAY-92 in Calgary, when that station was looking for a "Joe Sports" sort of guy to accompany the morning man, Gerry Forbes.

And suddenly I remembered the week the station had all those "auditions," where anyone who wanted to try out could come in and do a sports broadcast, and maybe win a job. And I remembered that audition day when Collin -- Joe Sports -- whooshed in like a hurricane or a blizzard, and basically took over the broadcast. When he was done, you felt as cold -- and invigorated -- as though you'd just had a barrel of Gatorade dumped on you after a late November football game. There were no more auditions after that.

Allan Maki of the Globe and Mail put it this way:

"Those are my thoughts, not yours; I'm Jo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-e Sports."

That was his tag line. Joe Ordinary. Joe Average. Joe Sports. Just a guy with a microphone and a platform to express his views. And yes, he often expressed them like air gushing out of a punctured balloon.

But that's what made him so interesting, so engaging and so unique.

Joe Sports died late Tuesday. He was 45. He had taken leukemia to the 10th round and was ahead on points until he was floored by pneumonia. It figures it would take a sucker punch to defeat Collin Smith, otherwise known as Joe Sports, Calgary's most bombastic, most energetic broadcaster.

Joe Sports was as loud as a marching band, as opinionated as Rush Limbaugh on truth serum. He took on the biggest buffoons of the Calgary sports scene and he skewered them until you were giggling. Was it Washington Post journalism? Not always. Was it entertaining? Always.

Joe Sports was the kind of guy you wanted to have a beer with and talk about the Flames and Stampeders. Collin Smith was the guy you wanted as coach of your community soccer team.

[snip]

Late in 2005, Calgarians learned Joe Sports had leukemia and was taking time off from his gigs with The Fan 960 and Global television. Smith's younger brother ended up being the donor in a bone marrow transplant that took place last year, and for a time everything seemed to be going Collin Smith's way.

But complications ensued and Joe Sports was hospitalized and late Tuesday he bid us farewell. He left behind a wife, four kids and enough friends and memories to fill the Pengrowth Saddledome.

We in the media don't often celebrate our own. We believe we're never the story; we're simply the story tellers; the people who go blah, blah, blah, "and in other news."

Joe Sports was the other news and he left us much too soon.

I know that anybody who'd be reading this post has probably never heard of him. But I wanted to memorialize him somehow, anyway.

I'm surprised that this grieves me quite as much as it does, considering I haven't heard his sportscasts for more than seven years, and had never met him. But I guess he was very much a fixture in my life for many years in Calgary, and you never realize how important those "fixtures" are until suddenly they disappear.

Plus -- he was 45. That's all. Damn.