August 16, 1954, 70 years ago: Sports Illustrated debuts, produced by Time, Inc. The 1st cover of the weekly magazine shows a scene from a baseball game at Milwaukee County Stadium: Eddie Matthews of the host Milwaukee Braves is swinging his bat, in front of New York Giants catcher Wes Westrum. Behind Westrum is umpire Augie Donatelli.
It wasn't the 1st magazine with the name. In 1936, Stuart Scheffel created Sports Illustrated as a monthly magazine, with golf, tennis and skiing as its main focus. It failed after 2 years, and Scheffel sold the rights to the name to Dell Publications. (Aside from the name, that company has no connection to electronics company Dell Technologies.)
In 1949, Dell released a monthly magazine with the name, and that lasted just 6 issues, despite expanding its coverage to boxing and the major team sports. But it couldn't compete against Sport, the monthly that was the biggest sports magazine since its founding in 1946.
At the time, there were 2 problems with producing a sports magazine. It would cost too much to do so more regularly than monthly. This led to the 2nd problem: Timeliness. For example: Suppose you were running a publishing house in the Summer of 1951, and you wanted to launch a sports magazine. You decide that your 1st issue will be a preview of that year's World Series. You see the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers leading their respective Leagues. So you conclude that the Series will be between those 2 teams.
And your premiere issue comes out at the end of September. By that point, the Dodgers have blown their big lead, to the New York Giants. On October 3, "The Giants win the Pennant!" And you look like a fool. No one wants to buy your magazine. And you're out of business before you can publish an issue previewing the 1951 NFL Championship Game and the New Year's Day 1952 college football bowl games.
For this reason, the biggest sports-themed magazines of the era were the baseball preview issues published by Baseball Digest and Street & Smith. They would make predictions for the season to come, but it was a lot easier to overcome ridicule for making a bad prediction for October in March than it would be in September.
By this time, the post-World War II economic boom was in full swing, so more people were in a position to buy magazines. And to buy the television sets on which to watch sporting events. And to buy tickets to watch the events live. The market for a weekly sports magazine, which could keep up with events as they were happening, was there -- for a publishing house that could afford to produce it.
Henry Robinson Luce could afford it: He ran Time, Inc., and had already succeeded with the newsmagazine Time (a weekly founded in 1923), the photo-based newsmagazine Life (a weekly founded in 1936), and the business-themed magazine Fortune (a monthly founded in 1929). And in 1953, he thought the time was right to try a weekly that would be, essentially, Time, but focused on sports. When the owners of Sport weren't willing to sell their magazine, or the rights to their magazine's name, at any price, Luce bought the rights to the name Sports Illustrated.
But Luce's background worked against the magazine: A graduate of Yale University, his friends were mainly the very rich, like himself. Their pastimes included golf, tennis, sailing, hunting, fishing, and the card game of contract bridge. Now, I am of the firm belief that golf is not a sport. Tennis is. Competitive sailing, I suppose, qualifies. But fishing is not a sport. Nor is hunting: As has been pointed out many times, including by Rick Reilly in SI in the 1980s, it's not a "sport" if "the other team" doesn't even know there's a competition.
Bridge? That's not a sport. It's a game -- one I have never played, and I don't know the rules -- and not athletic in the slightest. And yet, Luce published articles about the game in Sports Illustrated. Twice, he put Charles Goren, both the leading bridge player and the leading writer about the game in his generation, on the SI cover, and frequently printed Goren's articles. I have frequently lamented ESPN's televising of competitive poker, because it's a card game and not a sport. Well, Luce publishing Goren's bridge articles was the 1950s' equivalent.
(For those of you who do enjoy playing bridge: I'm not saying it's a bad game, or that it's not worth your time. And I'm certainly not casting aspersions on Goren. I'm saying that the game shouldn't be discussed in a magazine about sports, except maybe as an aside in an article about a real athlete. For example: If Heavyweight Champion Rocky Marciano enjoyed playing bridge -- and I don't know if he enjoyed any card games -- that might be worth mentioning in an SI article about him, along with his preferences in food, music and TV shows.)
Just as Time had been producing a Man of the Year issue since 1927, SI issued an end-of-the-year Sportsman of the Year issue. The 1st honoree was Roger Bannister, the British medical student who, a few weeks before the 1st issue, had become the 1st person to run a mile race in less than 4 minutes; then, a few weeks later, having his record beaten by the Australian runner John Landy, beat Landy in a much-publicized race at the British Empire Games in Vancouver.
Now known as "Sportsperson of the Year," the title has occasionally been awarded to multiple individuals, and sometimes even to entire teams. It's gone to performers in the various sports this many times: Baseball 18, basketball 18, football 17, track and field 8, golf 7, tennis 5, hockey 4, boxing 3; 2 each in soccer, cycling and speed skating; and 1 each in auto racing, horse racing (to a jockey, not a horse), gymnastics and swimming.
The 1st black recipient was decathlete Rafer Johnson in 1958, while Kip Keino, awarded in 1987 for his charitable efforts even though his Olympic running achievements were in 1968 and 1972, was the 1st African native to receive the award. The 1st Hispanic recipient was golfer Lee Trevino in 1971, while Sammy Sosa receiving a co-award with Mark McGwire in 1998 made him the 1st Latin American native to get it.
The 1st female recipient was Billie Jean King in 1972, sharing it (the first time it was split) with UCLA basketball coach John Wooden. The 1st female sole recipient was also a tennis player, Chris Evert in 1976. Billie Jean was still in the closet at the time, so the 1st openly gay recipient was Megan Rapinoe in 2019. Tiger Woods, whose mother was from Thailand, was the 1st recipient of Asian descent, in 1996. South Korean native Byun-Hyun Kim, as part of the collective award to the 2004 Boston Red Sox, was the 1st recipient from an Asian country.
It's been awarded to 5 Canadians (hockey players Bobby Orr, Wayne Gretzky and Bob Bourne; football player Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, and basketball player Chris Boucher as part of the collective award to the 2018 Golden State Warriors), an Englishman (Bannister), a Scotsman (auto racer Jackie Stewart), a Swede (boxer Ingemar Johansson), a Kenyan (Keino), a Norwegian (speed skater Johan Olav Koss), a Dominican (baseball players Sosa, and 2004 Red Sox David Ortiz, Manny Ramírez, Pedro Martínez, Sandy Martínez, Anastacio Martínez and Pedro Astacio -- none of those Martínezes is related to any of the others), a Puerto Rican (César Crespo with the 2004 Red Sox), a Colombian (Orlando Cabrera with the 2004 Red Sox), a Panamanian (Ramiro Mendoza with the 2004 Red Sox), a Korean (Kim), a Venezuelan (baseball player José Altuve), a Georgian (Zaza Pachulia of the 2018 Warriors) and a Japanese (tennis player Naomi Osaka).
Until Woods in 2000, no one had received the award more than once. Basketball player LeBron James has gotten it 3 times, while Woods and football player Tom Brady have gotten it twice. Of course, Brady, Sosa, Altuve, and, collectively, the 2004 Red Sox have since been exposed as blatant and unrepentant cheaters.
It's been given to field bosses (managers in baseball, head coaches in other sports): Bill Russell (player-coach) in 1968, John Wooden in 1972, Joe Paterno in 1986, Don Shula in 1993, Dean Smith in 1997, Mike Krzyzewski and Pat Summitt in 2011; and Deion Sanders in 2023.
And it's been given to 1 Commissioner: The NFL's Pete Rozelle in 1963. Oddly, in 1984, when Time gave Olympic Games organizer and newly-hired MLB Commissioner Peter Ueberroth its Man of the Year, SI didn't give him Sportsperson of the Year: They split it between Olympians Edwin Moses and Mary Lou Retton.
Sometimes, the award is controversial, and more of a "lifetime achievement award" than an award for that specific year. Such examples include baseball player Stan Musial in 1957, basketball coaches John Wooden in 1972 and Dean Smith in 1997, golfer Jack Nicklaus in 1978, football coaches Joe Paterno in 1986 and Don Shula in 1993, tennis player Arthur Ashe in 1992, and football player Brett Favre in 2007. While Ashe was dying of AIDS after a lifetime of activism, each of these honorees could legitimately have been said to have had better years than the ones in which they were honored (although Wooden did win a National Championship in the year in question, and Paterno was about to finish off such a season).
In 1960, André Laguerre became managing editor of SI. The magazine had never turned a profit, but Luce could afford to not care about that. Laguerre made it turn a profit by 1964, with the maxim, "It doesn't matter what you write about. All that matters is how well you write."
It was under Laugerre that SI began to resemble the magazine we know today. He phased out the rich man's "sportsman" articles, and focused on the sports that middle-class Americans were interested in: Boxing, horse racing, and the major team sports. The magazine became known for its season preview issues and its Olympic coverage.
And, starting in 1964, for Laugerre's creation, the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. It usually comes out in February, possibly a reference to Paul Gallico, who, when asked in 1937 why he gave up sportswriting, said, "February." In other words, when it was too cold in most of the country for outdoor sports like baseball, football, track and field, golf, tennis and horse racing. Indoor sports like basketball and hockey had yet to become big business; while Americans couldn't have cared less about soccer, played around the world in the Winter, no matter how cold it got.
Aside from the Swimsuit Issue, if there's one thing people know about the magazine, it's "The Dreaded SI Cover Jinx." It began almost immediately: Matthews soon suffered a broken hand, although he only missed 7 games. But on January 30, 1955, skier Jill Kinmont suffered a crash that left her paralyzed. The SI issue with her on the cover, already in stores and mailed to subscribers, was dated the very next day.
On February 13, 1961, 16-year-old Laurence Owen was on the cover, for a preview of the World Figure Skating Championships. Two days later, along with the entire U.S. team, she was killed in a plane crash on the way to the event. Other cover subjects included skiers and auto racers who ended up killed in competitions; and race horse breeder Prince Aly Khan, and golfer Tony Lema, all by 1966.
The most memorable non-fatal example came in the issue dated November 18, 1957. It featured the University of Oklahoma football team, riding a 47-game winning streak, still a college football record. The cover headline was, "Why Oklahoma is Unbeatable." The 2-time defending National Champions were upset by Notre Dame on November 16.
For the 1987 Baseball Preview Issue, SI put Cleveland Indians sluggers Joe Carter and Cory Snyder on the cover, under the headline "INDIAN UPRISING," adding, "Believe it! Cleveland is the best team in the American League." This soon turned out to be, spectacularly, not the case, and manager Pat Corrales answered a question about the Jinx, saying, "Sports Illustrated isn't getting my hitters out. Sports Illustrated isn't hitting my pitchers." He was soon fired.
But the jinx doesn't affect most honorees. For many years, boxer Muhammad Ali held the record for most appearances on the cover, and he is generally regarded as what he called himself: "The Greatest of All Time!" He has now appeared 40 times. But Michael Jordan, usually (if inaccurately) called the greatest basketball player ever, now holds the record, with 50 SI covers. Among active athletes, LeBron leads with 25. Most appearances by team? The Los Angeles Lakers have had 67, just ahead of the New York Yankees with 65.
In 2018, Time Inc. sold SI to Authentic Brands Group. The Arena Group (formerly theMaven, Inc.) was subsequently awarded a 10-year license to operate the SI–branded editorial operations, while ABG licenses the brand for other non-editorial ventures and products.
On January 19, 2024, The Arena Group missed a quarterly licensing payment, leading ABG to terminate the company's license. Arena, in turn, laid off the publication's editorial staff. Some longtime fans of the magazine called this "The Death of Sports Illustrated."
In March 2024, ABG licensed the publishing rights to Minute Media in a 10-year deal, jointly announcing that the print and digital editions would be revived by rehiring some of the editorial staff. In May, Sports Illustrated failed to deliver a print copy of the publication for the month to its subscribers for the first time in the magazine's 70-year history. Apparently, SI is not out of the woods yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment