It's easy, very easy, to write sports columns about the thugs and the greedy and the careless and the stupid and the woeful of professional sports.

Those guys are all around us and sometimes it seems like we can't escape.

So it is refreshing, very refreshing when we see examples of classy behavior. This week we need to pay homage to two men who have set special examples when it comes to brains and class.

The two guys are very different, Brewers' owner Mark Attanasio and San Diego Charger running back LaDainian Tomlinson. But, their level of class puts them on the same plateau.

Let's start with Attanasio, a man who has high expectations and even higher hopes and who no doubt was disappointed about both now that the season is over.

There's a lot of very loud pressure on him to fire Ned Yost. The pressure is loud, but it doesn't make much sense, once you get past the idiots who are doing the shouting.

The afternoon idiots on WSSP this week were doing a segment on who should be the "scapegoat" for the Brewers' season.

If he was like almost any other modern day professional sports owner, Attanasio would meet with his general manager behind closed doors, make a decision to fire the manager and send the GM out to deliver the news.

But, that's not the way he handled it.

Attanasio comes from the world of high finance, where you better have at least one very good reason for making a decision. Several good reasons are even better, but you've got to have at least one. And his world is full of processes to make those decisions.

He's also got a process for his baseball team, and his process told him that it doesn't make much sense to fire his manager. He knows that there is a value to stability, especially with a team full of youngsters.

So, he showed up at Miller Park and during informal chats and walking around the place, he made it clear that Yost was coming back. No big news conference. No handed-out press releases. Just a guy with a baseball team, telling everybody -- Yost, the players, the fans and the idiots -- that while there may be changes, the manager is not going to be one of them.

You can bet this was not an accidental stroll through the stadium. This was how he decided to make this announcement.

Attanasio gets very high marks for the decision he made and for the way he announced it. This is a new kind of owner, not one driven by frantic desperation (see Mark Cuban), but one who believes in growing a family steadily.

Maybe most important, he is teaching a lesson to all of us who have gotten used to reacting with immediacy and breathlessness to a business that is best savored like a fine wine instead of a beer chugging contest.

I've never even met Attanasio and I'm about his father's age. But someday, I'd like it if he'd call me up and ask me to watch a game with him and his dad. Or maybe his kids. If he's raising them the way he's raising his baseball team, they're going to turn out pretty good.

Now, a final word about another classy move.

Tomlinson, probably the best running back in football, was obviously despondent when he met the press after his Chargers lost to the Packers.

His team was suffering and the rushing game had been terrible.

Tomlinson said he was despondent and frustrated with the way his team had performed. Then he did the classy thing.

"This is probably one of my greatest moments in football," he said to a shocked press corps. "This was history before us, the game, the fans the stadium. It was a terrific game to watch if you are fan."

Here was a guy who had just lost a major battle and he made a point of paying homage to one of the great places in the world of sports.

Class, all the way.