A real “man bites dog” story. News, that is.

David T. Bristow, former San Bernardino Sun sports staffer, was sworn in Friday as a federal magistrate judge for the U.S. Central District Court.

Yes. Our David Bristow, former Sun agate clerk and the guy who covered, home and road, the historic first season of the San Bernardino Spirit minor-league baseball team,  in 1987 … that same David T. put on his robes and vowed to protect the nation from “enemies both foreign and domestic” at the federal courthouse in Riverside, Calif., on Friday.

And he gave up such a promising journalism career!

All of us who knew David T. when he was taking prep calls … and then was out there covering the local California League team for us in 1987 and 1988 … well, it’s hard to wrap our minds around this idea. Even for me, and I was there to see him sworn in.

Bristow … Judge Bristow, thank you … is now one of 200-some federal magistrates in the United States, one of two who are based in Riverside — which is part of the biggest federal district in the U.S.

And it’s all because of his time in sports journalism.

Well, actually, it’s more likely despite his time in sports journalism. Here is a guy who is now a federal judge … who might have spent his prime working for a dying industry if we had been able to hire him full-time, a couple of decades ago.

Thankfully, for the country, we didn’t have a job to offer him, and he went off to law school instead, and on Friday he was lauded as a sober, scholarly, hard-working and compassionate man who will be a great jurist.

(And when was the last time you heard a sports journo described as “sober, scholarly, hard-working and compassionate?” Jay Mariotti, anyone? T.J. Simers? Mike Lupica? Any of us who worked with David Bristow in San Bernardino?)

(Here is a news story from July on the announcement of Bristow’s new job.)

David came to The Sun more than two decades ago. Maybe 1986? We posted an opening for a sports clerk on the job board at Cal State San Bernardino, and this guy David Bristow called.

My first reaction? “What a coincidence,” because we recently had employed as a clerk a guy named David Bristoe — slightly different spelling but same pronunciation.

David Bristow came in for an interview. He conceded he didn’t know tons about sports, and wasn’t a huge fan, nor a participant, particularly. But he clearly was a bright kid, and enthusiastic, and we graced him with our job opening — which was 25 hours a week and maybe $7 an hour.

He learned fast. What he didn’t know, he picked up. What he hadn’t been taught, he solved.

And he was great in the office. Never flustered. Smart. Upbeat. Everyone in the room liked him. Because he was a good guy, and because he became very good at what he did.

In 1987, a California League baseball team moved to San Bernardino. It was a very, very big local-local story, and we needed to cover it thoroughly. However, that was just when we were approaching the zenith of Sun sports department history, in terms of the scope of what we covered and how much we traveled. (Dodgers, Angels, USC, UCLA, Rams, Raiders.) We were already committed to more beats than we could really cover.

So we looked around the room … and David Bristow got the call to go cover this Cal League team.

It was a fun story from the first moment. The Spirit, as the former Ventura Gulls were now called, were going to play their first season as an independent team. That is, with no major-league affiliation. The Spirit would hold tryouts for players, hire them and pay them.

It meant the team would probably not be very good … it wouldn’t have any high draft picks … but it was sure to have a batch of characters. And it did.

David understood what that team was about from Day 1, when something like 700 people (including a couple of women) showed up for open tryouts. He knew we were looking for the quirky and the curious, and he brought it back to us, day after day.

When Opening Day arrived, we covered it like World War III. I think we had something like eight people at Fiscalini Field, a former community field converted almost overnight into a ballpark that held 3,500. It was packed. David did the game story. And nearly all of the 130-some games that followed. Whether they were in Reno, Modesto, Stockton, Salinas …

That also was in an era when nobody much covered Cal League baseball (certainly not on the road), and David was faced with enormous logistical challenges at every road stop. One phone in the press box. No phone in the press box. At Visalia, no real press box at all.

But he figured it out. He filed. He didn’t fail.

In the meantime, he had a great time with the team. He gave form and substance to players like Bamm-Bamm Morrison and Mike Brocki, Bryan King and Vince Shinholster.

Most of the guys on the team were his age, and he got along with them wonderfully. A few became lifelong friends. The club had some great characters in management, too. Such as general manager Bill Shanahan, who believed in selling “an electric atmosphere” above selling baseball — which meant a monster sound system and enough music to wake the dead at Mt.  View Cemetery. Such as manager Rich Dauer, former big-leaguer and all-around cool guy, who had no problems with the lads having a bit of fun.

We had David do a story about taking a road trip with the Spirit, and the broken-down bus the club rode on, and the hijinks the players were up to after games — cow-tipping in a pasture outside Bakersfield, snipe-hunting near Modesto, cannon-balling into a pool from the second story of a motel in Reno. It was a great read.

David covered Year 2, as well, I’m almost certain. And a guy who, in 1986, might not have known “hit-and-run” had a sports application … was a baseball writer.  It was quite remarkable.

Soon after, however, he was going to law school, and a few years later he was hired by the San Bernardino County district attorney, and then went into private practice …

And while we continued to know him as our David, who covered the Spirit, who had joined our fantasy baseball league and generally had bad teams … he was making a name for himself in the legal community. He eventually was to become president of the Riverside County Bar Association, and a major figure in the Inland Empire community,  a supporter of the arts and a Riverside hospice.  He was on so many boards, it’s no wonder he didn’t always know who was the hot young shortstop with the Cleveland Indians.

A few years ago, he became the chairman of a prominent Riverside law firm. And now he is a federal magistrate, a pillar of the Riverside community, a respected family man. And maybe The Sun sports department’s prime success story.

It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. A better human being. Even as a college kid, he genuinely cared and was interested when he asked “how are you doing?” He never lost that capacity for caring, even after nearly 15-plus years in the legal community, a point that was hammered home repeatedly by those who got up and lauded him Friday during the swearing-in ceremony.

And perhaps this is telling, too. As president of Reid & Hellyer, he must have been generously compensated. No one mentioned this (and David never would), but he must have just taken a serious pay cut to become a judge. To serve the country. My impression is that federal magistrates make no more than $160,000 a year — which is a lot of money to most of us, but peanuts for top trial lawyers.

Anyway, I’m proud of the guy … and happy we didn’t mess him up too much during those years he spent with us at the paper. Still, we probably will treat him as the slightly uninformed club owner when he shows up for the next Sun Baseball League draft.