Ha, the first one I can remember having was this one:
I don't remember what my first issue of SI was because my dad had a subscription long before I was aware of sports. But I did get SI for Kids, and specifically I remember that publication introducing me to Jennifer Capriati. I thought it may have been before she played a pro tournament that they did a profile on her, so I went and looked up when SI for Kids started to see if it was possible. Turns out I had a sub from the very start, which was January 1989, because I remember that cover. So I'm assuming my memory is correct and SI for Kids did something on Capriati before she went pro. And I'll use that SI for Kids cover as my first memory even though I'm sure I read regular SI before that.
This one is framed on the wall at my parent's house. Probably the first cover I remember before Kathy Ireland.
I can’t believe that lambert cover is from July 1984. It’s iconic, but I always assumed it was from the heyday of the Steel Curtain. He retired in 84, apparently.
The day that magazine arrived in our mailbox was the day I stopped being a Mets fan.First Issue from my first subscription:
It's shameful that the Mets ever traded him, and it was even more shameful that after he was reacquired, they lost him a second time because they failed to protect him. At the very least he should have been able to earn his 300th win and retired as a Met. But that team was in a long period of mismanagement, so there was no happy ending for the franchise and The Franchise.
It's been done at least one other time. As I was buying it in 2019 I thought, this is probably the last physical issue I'll ever purchase.
This is all sorts of awesome. Thank you for your service.
I think you may be right, but it's probably because it photographs well. You have blue water and sailboats---that's 80% of the artwork in hotels.
Great picture, happy Vets Day, and thank you for your service. I haven’t watched “The Greatest Beer Run Ever” but the presence of PBR in this photo makes me wonder if that dude made it to you guys too.
I had a SI bonus videotape called something like “Greatest Sports Moments of the 80s” which got worn out in our house. It was the usual suspects which you can probably guess - but Dennis Connor & crew winning the Americas Cup back was like #4. (I always had to skip #2
)
This is very cool. And, I would have recognized him as a driver…I first thought he was a jockey.
In the early days of SI, there was definitely a link between editors, administrators and wealthy sportsmen who lived in the city and on Long Island. The big shots hung out at the NYAC, which I believe sponsored the Cup for many years while it was held by the U.S. George Plimpton was an aristocrat who happened to write sports while also founding the Paris Review.
i remember a very brief ‘fair skies and following seas’ moment in 83 when my friends and I all had opinions on sailing after the Australian upset. I’m pretty sure that none of us had ever been on more than a catamaran (briefly) in our lives. The SI influence at work!
I did a cross-country driving trip in 1985. TSN's minor league coverage led me to say, "I've heard of that place," dozens of times.
Not just Gammons from Boston, but Leigh Montville and Bob Ryan. And other great writers from around the country, like Art Spander (SF) & Jerome Holtzman (CH). Each *team* had a roundup, IIRC.
I remember those write-ups, they had them for every team (no matter the sport) back in the 80s. Want to know about the Canucks? How about the Padres? The Spurs? You could be a mini expert in five minutes if you had a Sporting News back in the day.
In college a friend's father came to visit, and on Sunday he brought out some sort of puzzle or teaser the NYT ran -- they printed a box score from a random game and asked 20 questions about the game, the answers to which, they said, could be discerned from the box score itself. Like "which batters did Tekulve face" or "what happened in the bottom of the 7th" or "who walked for the Tigers"? Because I'd read a billion TSN box scores, i got all twenty in about 5 minutes.
Early-season boxscores also helped us baseball fans with math calculations. We knew all the variations of batting averages in that first week of the season. 6 for 17 was .353. 4 for 14, .286.
WBW in SI's younger days, America's Cup was an almost every 3-4 year party summer in Newport, RI hosted by the NY Yacht Club, who like most decent folks wanted to get the fuck out NYC in the summer. And the T&E 3-or 4 martini lunches and active Newport preppy-Ivy-WASPY party scene probably was very appealing to SI's editors writers and photographers to combine some business, refreshing ocean breezes with catching a buzz all in the name of sport.
