WASHINGTON -- We're inside the MCI Center on Monday, day of the WNBA All-Star game. Players visit and joke with each other and the media during interview time between practices.

	Sheryl Swoopes, left, and Tamika Catchings will square off again in this year's All-Star Game.

A radio guy approaches Minnesota's Katie Smith, and with a big smile shows her his University of Arkansas class ring. He thinks he is breaking the ice with a fellow Razorback.

Smith says, politely, "No, I'm a Buckeye, Ohio State University.''

"Oh, really?'' Radio Guy says. "Well, I know there was a really good player named Smith who went to Arkansas.''

Welcome to sports "journalism,'' an occupation where even the most rudimentary professionalism is considered optional by some. Especially when it comes to women's athletics.

It would have been so difficult for Radio Guy to check this out before approaching Smith, right? All those WNBA media guides are sitting there in the media room just to hold down tables. And why do kindergarten-level "research'' when you can just as easily look thoroughly unprepared?

Radio Guy proceeds to ask three questions, the first two being of the standard "What do you think of the All-Star Game in D.C.?'' variety.

The third: "There is a perception that a lot of the fans who come to WNBA games have what might be termed as an 'alternative lifestyle.' What do you think about that?''

While I was having evil thoughts about Radio Guy, Smith answered it all like a pro, saying in regard to the latter that all fans were welcomed and greatly appreciated.

Later, as the players began to practice, I chat with a friend and fellow reporter who has covered women's sports for several years. We talk about our disgust with the misogyny and misinformation of sports-talk radio, with the excuses still given by many newspaper and magazine editors for their sub-standard coverage of women's sports.

He and I consider ourselves lucky, working in environments that are typically encouraging. But lots of our colleagues don't have that, and some of them eventually just give up.

"You can understand,'' he says, "how some people just get tired of fighting.''

Now, we're outside the MCI Center, and I'm still mulling over why a chunk of the sports-media world actually revels in its ignorance. (Men's soccer, incidentally, also gets treated like this in the United States; some media folks absolutely burst with pride telling us how little they know or care about it.)

This is a common aggravation, and I was quite capable of stewing about it for the few hours I had to walk around D.C. before the game.

But then I went past a woman curled up, apparently sleeping, in a small recess along the base of the MCI Center. She had matted gray hair, too many clothes on for the middle of July. Her meager, dirty possessions were protectively next to or underneath her.

I looked at her, aware that I wasn't going to do anything to help, other than give her money were she to open her eyes and ask me. Which she didn't.

So it was her that I thought about more while walking around this amazing city, with all its granite and marble and brick and magnitude.

How old is she? Is she off her medication? Doesn't she have children or grandchildren or a sister or a brother to take care of her? Is she always like this?

Does she think about anything while lying there? Will anyone come by and take her some place where there is a bed and food? What was she like when she was a child? How could she stand the sun shining so brightly on her or the hardness of the concrete beneath her?

Will she still be there when I get back tonight?

Now we're inside the MCI Center again. The woman had still been there in the same spot, and most people didn't seem to notice her. A little girl, wearing a WNBA All-Star game T-shirt and holding someone's hand, had turned her head to stare at the woman. Then she had done what everyone else did, kept on walking.

Before the game, WNBA president Val Ackerman makes her state-of-the-league address. A TV reporter asks about using "appearance'' to sell the sport. Then questions about attendance and expansion. And someone asks about the collective-bargaining agreement.

Ackerman answers everything diplomatically, but gives no quarter to pessimism or cynicism. It was the All-Star game, the MCI Center was sold out. If people still wanted to write or broadcast something gloomy this night, Ackerman wasn't going to help them.

The locker rooms are open before the game, and the players are relaxed and easy to talk to about a variety of topics. There seems to be realism about how a labor agreement needs to be reached, with the rigidity of the salary structure being one of the bigger issues.

There's the pomp of pre-game introductions, the dancers, mascots and other performers during breaks of play and at halftime.

And there's the actual game, entertaining and fast-paced, enthusiastically played. It's a good showcase for the WNBA. You think fans got their money's worth.

Afterward, the locker rooms are open again. It's an exhibition, so there's no real difference in mood between the winning and losing teams. Both enjoyed it.

"We really wanted to win,'' says Indiana's Tamika Catchings, who played hard for the East despite having suffered a broken nose and mild concussion three nights before. "But it's also supposed to be a fun game for everybody.''

In the West locker room, Seattle's Sue Bird smiles at a boy of maybe 11 or 12 who does his own radio show and is taking very seriously the press credential he was issued. Would that all his elders did.

"You're the youngest reporter who's ever interviewed me,'' Bird tells him, and then proceeds to answer his questions in her usual thoughtful manner. And when he asks if she would do a little promo for his show, Bird glances at his media pass to be sure she's got his name right and does it perfectly, in one take.

You think, Bird will end up with more championships and an Olympic gold medal or two and a very nice income supplemented by endorsements.

And none of it will change how genuinely good a person she is.

All the talk-radio garbage in the world can't dent Sue Bird.

Now we're outside the MCI Center again. It's very late, all deadlines hopefully met. The streets around the building are quiet and empty.

The woman isn't there anymore.

I could think about that more, or reflect on the game. I do the latter while giving another reporter a ride to her hotel. We're not 100 percent sure where we're going, but we've got a map and are pretty close to figuring it out. We're talking about all the cool stories there are to write and how energizing these events are and how readers do care. Then ...

It strikes both of us that there are a lot more people on the sidewalks along these streets ... almost all women, that is, and they are all dressed like ...

"This isn't exactly a place where you want to roll down the window and ask for directions, is it?'' my friend says.

Some people still call it a "victimless'' crime, a simple case of supply and demand, a transaction.

We're stopped at a light, and there are two teen-aged girls I notice in particular, because both look so lucid and I can see their faces clearly. One is black, the other is white, both are pretty.

They wear very similar halter tops, tiny shorts and high-heeled sandals. They're so young and fresh-faced, it makes a small pain start in my stomach -- the same kind you get when driving past a bad car accident -- and I think, "They just can't possibly be doing this.''

Maybe, I try to lie to myself, they were both at a party and now are walking up and down the sidewalk at 2 a.m. waiting for their rides home.

But that's ridiculous.

Then I hope that maybe tonight no one will buy them, or any of the other women, and maybe they'll wake up tomorrow and decide to be something else. But that's even more ridiculous.

So everything became mixed together, a collage in my mind of what I've seen this day in our country's capital: the strength, empowerment and joy of some women, the everyday tragedy of others. The kinship I feel with all of them.

I drop off my friend at her hotel, then head down 14th Street and out of the city.

Mechelle Voepel of the Kansas City Star is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. She can be reached at mvoepel@kcstar.com.