Election Night transpired without me. I was in London, visiting family. But I certainly was curious to know the results and was reminded, as with every Tuesday after the first Monday of November, of the most invigorating aspect of having attempted journalism for a half century—the dare to provide information of significant public interest. On deadline.

For reporters and editors, Election Night is a figurative trip down a steep mountain trail without guardrails. A survival test. And though I never covered that specific event, working instead in the world of sports journalism, I have been there.

Allow me to cite a relevant remembrance by former New York Times columnist George Vecsey on the occasion of former Times sports editor Joe Vecchione’s death at 85. Vecsey wrote of “the midnight hour” in October 1986 when Mookie Wilson’s apparently harmless ground ball somehow conjured an impossible New York Mets World Series victory over Boston.

“…fans were screaming,” Vecsey wrote, “and nearly a dozen New York Times writers were pounding away at their laptops, shouting into phones, bustling noisily to update their early stories for the last print deadline of the evening. Enlightened cacophony.”

He noted that Vecchione, in the stadium press box, was coordinating with his staff at the game and at the paper’s office, making decisions on the fly, and in the end was approached by a “young Times news reporter, doing spot duty to cover fan madness, police activity, etc.” Having witnessed the under-the-gun performance of the sportswriters—“so often maligned as ‘the toy department,'” Vecsey pointed out—the news man marveled to Vecchione, “Wow, that was impressive.”

To which Vecchione replied, “We do it every day.”

That tale of Vecchione and his “toy department” troops executing under bludgeoning pressure helps assuage feelings of inferiority among those of us who fought our deadline battles dealing with less-consequential winners than candidates for the Presidency, Senate or House of Representatives.

On this year’s Election Night, The New Yorker editor David Remnick recalled in a brief post the “festive” atmosphere of news institutions’ tradition in which “editors and writers stayed late, ate cold pizza and rapped out news stories and instant analyses as best they could.” While the clocked ticked relentlessly.

Of course, the result of a ball game hardly matters as much as Election Night balloting, but the journalistic requirements are the same: Accuracy, fairness, clarity—all at breakneck speed—using just the right words and images. The sports author Dan Jenkins, through one of his characters, once described journalism as “literature in a hurry.”

So it’s been a burr under sportswriters’ saddles forever that, on Election Night, newspaper newsrooms order in pizza and soft drinks to sustain reporters through a long night of sifting great quantities of news to crank out readable copy. Followed by signs appearing the next day around the office acclaiming the “Great Job!” done during that once-a-year endeavor.

While those of us in the toy department would shake our heads and mutter, “Every night is Election Night in sports.” Minus the pizza.

At the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, there were six of us from Newsday’s sports department—and one newsside fellow—wrapping up reports on the day’s activities when the aforementioned news reporter asked one late afternoon, around 6 p.m., where everyone was going for dinner. We had to inform him that the night was just beginning, with some five hours of deadline work still ahead. To be followed for the next couple of weeks by regular day-night doubleheaders. Casual dining was not part of the deal.

In retirement, I remain drawn to the drama of an occasional ball game on television. But, as contests progress late into the evening, with the outcome still in doubt, my first thought is not to wonder about the potential winner but to empathize with the on-site sportswriters and their building challenge, their adrenaline pumping while deadline—the enemy, the problem, the ax about to fall—looms.

Times baseball writer James Wagner, detailing the chaos of a last-minute order to cover a 2017 World Series game—his scramble to organize background information, adjust in real time to the game developments and shape his dispatch in clear, bright English—noted that, “While the most dramatic, mind-bending games are fun to watch on the couch or at the bar or in the stands, trying to capture the many late-game twists and turns as the final print-edition deadline nears can be nerve-racking.”

But, too, another form of great fun, with an enormous sense of satisfaction when it is done. Dave Anderson, the late Pulitzer Prize-winning sports columnist for the Times—after having again out-dueled deadline with yet another well-crafted story—always departed the scene with a wink and the perfect sign-off: “Fooled ‘em again.”