IT SHOULDN'T TAKE PAIN TO SEE CLEARLY.

Byline: Kevin Modesti

A champion golfer and five other people are killed in a mysterious jet crash, and you know somebody will say it.

Sure enough, here it is in the Associated Press report on rival golfers' reactions to Payne Stewart's death Monday.

``It certainly puts into perspective little things like missed putts.'' - Jean Van de Velde, runner-up at this year's British Open.

Perspective. The word is as handy as a lob wedge at moments like these, when real life intrudes on fun and games.

It's the most offensive cliche in the sports world, which is full of cliches.

A football coach walks away from a highway collision feeling lucky to be alive, and he tells a reporter, ``It put that game in Miami in perspective, trust me.''

A young basketball player is diagnosed with bone cancer, and his coach says, ``When something like that happens, it kind of puts the importance of basketball in perspective.''

A record-setting former jockey is paralyzed in an auto accident, and a thoroughbred trainer says, ``A horse runs bad and you're mad - but then you look over there (at the man in the wheelchair) and it kind of puts it all in perspective.''

And you can only wonder if people have to die, if spouses and children have to bury their loved ones, if athletic bodies have to be devastated for some of these numbskulls in helmets and cleats to realize where sports rate in the grand scheme of things.

How thick must you be if the big picture isn't clear to you until you're at a funeral, consoling the widow?

A basketball immortal's retirement press conference falls on the day his city mourns a slain police officer, and the player says, ``That puts life in perspective.''

A hockey player comes back from a debilitating illness, and he says, ``It put a lot of things in perspective.''

A running back's ghastly knee injury forces amputation, and his coach says, ``It just puts everything in perspective.''

In other words, until the moment the doctor came in with the bad news, the coach thought life revolved around establishing the run.

Fortunately, somebody doesn't always have to die for athletes and coaches to get the message. Sometimes, sports themselves put sports in perspective.

A Cy Young Award-winning pitcher goes back to the minor leagues on an injury-rehabilitation assignment, and notes, ``This puts baseball back in perspective. It's fun, it's a game, and that's how these kids are playing it.''

But that's rare. More often, it takes a network news bulletin to straighten people out.

Sportswriters are as guilty as athletes and coaches. Uneasy asking athletes about subjects bigger than the hit-and-run, we fall back on a sad shake of the head and, ``Kinda puts it all in perspective, huh?''

Just once, I'd like to hear an athlete reply, ``Not if you're bright enough to have it all in perspective already.'' But instead he'll typically nod along with the reporter, like the baseball player, following a cancer scare, who is quoted saying, ``Did it put (my life) in perspective? It has been an eye-opening experience.''

A women's basketball team gets to the NCAA Final Four after a season marked by the deaths of the coach's husband, the center's father, the team physician and a former ball girl. ``The deaths have put winning and losing into perspective,'' somebody writes.

A men's basketball coach's father dies of cancer: ``His father's death helped Cremins shift his perspective on the relative importance of bouncing basketballs in life's big picture,'' somebody writes, ever so concisely.

A prep basketball star, son of an old college basketball star, loses his 12-year-old sister to cancer: ``They Have Wider Perspective on Life,'' a newspaper's sub-headline reads.

So be assured that we in the press have our priorities thoroughly in order: 1. Life; 1A. death; 2. basketball.

Happily, there are people in sports who do have it all in perspective before tragedy occurs.

A workaholic football coach collapses and dies, and a colleague notes that he always reminds people, ``Although the game is life and death to us, you still have to have a sense of awareness that there is a real world. You can't lose perspective of that, or you become all-consumed.''

Payne Stewart seems to have been one of those rare sportsmen, the ones who knew the difference between ``major'' and ``important.''

``We all knew what the Ryder Cup meant to him,'' says Jose Maria Olazabal, an opponent of Stewart's in the recent competition between U.S. and European golfers. ``But he never lost perspective on what the match was all about.''

Too bad Stewart's son and daughter have to lose their father before some of his rivals figure it out.