This one begins in the spring of 1960 in Arizona, where the blossoming New York Herald Tribune columnist was sent by sports editor Stanley Woodward to cover spring training.

“I got out there and I was really impressed with myself,” Izenberg was recalling Saturday night. “I was a young kid thinking ‘Look at me! Here I am.’ And I started writing about these beautiful purple sunsets and the desert and this and that.”

After three days of focusing more on prose that professionals, Izenberg’s telephone rang. He quickly realized it wasn’t The Sporting News calling about his subscription.

“It was Stanley and he gave me the strongest tongue-lashing I’ve ever received in this business,” says Izenberg. “He said, ‘Get on a plane. I want to see you tomorrow.’ I said, ‘I’m coming home after spring training.’ And he repeated, ‘No, you’re coming home tomorrow.’”

When Izenberg reported to Woodward’s Manhattan office, he was sentenced to three months detention on the copy desk.

“He sat me down and told me, ‘You’re not getting off this desk until you learn what this business is about,’” Izenberg notes, raising a finger for emphasis. “He said, ‘If you want to be a journalist, get yourself a three-piece suit and a Phi Beta Kappa key and cover financial conferences in Belgium for The Times. We’re not journalists here. We’re not writers here. We’re newspaper people. And we tell people what they need to know.’”

It was a lesson well-learned by Izenberg, a storyteller extraordinaire who will enter the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame on Monday night. He has spent 49 years — the past 39 with the Newark (NJ) Star-Ledger — entertaining readers with his insight, humor and wonderfully-crafted paragraphs. His quilt-like career has taken him to championship boxing matches, the World Series, countless all-star games and every Super Bowl.

But none of it, Izenberg insists, could have happened without a stern scolding from Woodward, who passed away in 1966 and was inducted into the NSSA Hall of Fame eight years later.

“Stanley woke me up,” says Izenberg. “I learned so much from that man. He taught me about ethics. He taught me how to listen. I learned why I’m in this business from him — you write for the people. Really, he became my hero.”

And Izenberg, in turn, became a hero to thousands of readers and hundreds of athletes. He lists his all-time favorites as Muhammad Ali, soccer great Pele and a career fall-guy named Greatest Crawford, a boxer with great pride.

“Ali is my best friend,” Izenberg says. “I went through a great deal of hell defending him in the newspaper when nobody else would. He was the most charismatic athlete I have ever known. Only he and Joe DiMaggio could walk into any room and stop it cold. The difference is Ali could stop it outside the room.”

Of course, there are others worthy of mention. A sampling:

Joe Namath: “Born for one moment, and we all know what the moment was. Played the moment with 60-year old knees and actually lived off that moment for the rest of his career.”

Billie Jean King: “Changed the face of how women were regarded in this country. Had the testosterone, mixed in with the rest of it, to stand up and say, ‘Yeah, we’re making good money, but we’re gonna make money comparable with men. She stood up for a lot people.”

Wilt Chamberlain: “I loved him. For all the things he could do, he lacked one thing: a temper. And thank God. Willis Reed loved playing against him because he never got mad.”

Howard Cosell: “Howard was the guy who put depth behind the voice of television. He knew he was an ugly man but his hair spray never entered into his success. Those were the pluses. The minuses are he became so bloated with himself, he became abrasive. His ego turned him into a caricature of himself.”

Mickey Mantle: “A great case of might-have-been, you know bad knees, bad this, bad that. Came into New York under a horrific burden. You can’t walk out and replace Joe DiMaggio in New York City and think people are gonna love you. They do in the end, but it takes time. A gifted athlete but a also a bully. Not a nice guy to be around after the first drink.”

Tom Seaver: “A good guy but a guy I don’t think anybody really ever got to know. You could sense a very thin, but strong wall between you and him.”

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Now fast forward to this past January. Izenberg is in the Georgia Dome press box, engulfed in the drama of Super Bowl XXXIV, when he learns he’s been selected for the NSSA Hall of Fame.

“I get the call and I’m pretty excited,” he says. “I’m surrounded by a lot of close friends up there — Blackie Sheridan and Ed Pope — and it’s a great honor.”

Here’s the rest of this story. A few weeks later Izenberg received an intriguing letter in his New Jersey mailbox. “It’s this very expensive stationary and it’s from someone named Ellen W. Dixon,” he relates. “My first reaction is to throw it away because I’m always getting letters blasting the paper and calling me names. I don’t need that.”

But something tells him to open this one. When he does, he discovers its author is Woodward’s daughter and her words march right into his heart.

“She says, ‘I cannot tell you how thrilled I am that your plaque will hang near my father’s,’’ says Izenberg. “Then she wrote, ‘Before he died he told me you were the brightest, most-gifted writer and that one day you would be the best. I know that he knows it now.’”