Pond Scum and Vultures: America's Sportswriters Talk about Their Glamorous Profession

``The Toy Department'' is what most journalists disparagingly call their newspapers' sports divisions. The aim of California ex-sportswriter Wojciechowski is to condemn that condescension and establish that his former brethren are tough-minded, ethical and gifted. Their chief obstacle, he argues, may be the athletes, coaches and managers with whom sports journalists do business, a fractious, self-interested, combative constituency; yet if such hostility is bred in part by the tactics of adversarial journalists, that point is played down here. But all is not suffering and solemnity to Wojciechowski: having interviewed many sportswriters, he opens a cache of funny ``hardship'' stories to the public eye, and also examines such allied problems as the continuing second-class status of female sports scribes. (Nov.)