LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHERS

This week SPORTS ILLUSTRATED readers will be seeing double. In addition to their weekly copy of the magazine, subscribers will be receiving as part of their subscription a copy of the special issue, A Year in Sports, which will also be available on most newsstands Tuesday, Feb. 22.

A Year in Sports is a 148-page bonanza of color photographs and text. Working closely with Art Director Richard Gangel and other members of SI's editorial staff, Senior Editor Peter Carry has created an album that we hope readers will treasure.

"We have never put out this kind of supplement before," Carry says, "but we have thought about it frequently. At the end of each year there is always so much we wish we had had room for, especially in Olympic years."

In addition to extensive coverage of the 1976 Summer and Winter Olympics, the special issue includes sections on baseball, basketball, football, hockey, golf, tennis, boxing and horse racing, each illustrated with vivid photographs and accompanied by a summary of the year's highlights.

The text piece in the special issue was done by Senior Writer Ron Fimrite with the help of Reporter Myra Gelband. As Fimrite says, he set about looking for "Moments. So much of sports competition is in flashes, split seconds of drama. There is always tension, and sometimes humor or disappointment. Beauty, glory, irony. And mostly accomplishment. I looked for those moments of achievement, to express in words what a picture can convey in a single frame."

The special issue contains more than 100 pictures, the best of some 500,000 taken during the year. Some appeared in the magazine, many others have not been previously published. For example, Picture Researcher Barbara Henckel spent three weeks culling selections from the Innsbruck and Montreal Olympics alone. "I was looking for two types of pictures," she says. "Those that were important and newsworthy, and the more artistic shots, the ones that prod the memory or evoke a mood."

Picture Editor Don Delliquanti, who edited photographs of football, basketball and baseball, made a couple of selections for reasons of his own. He is a Rutgers alumnus, class of '64, and—wonders never cease—the issue includes a spectacular overhead action shot of Rutgers Guard Mike Dabney.

The picture of the late Tom Yawkey, the Boston Red Sox owner, was also a Delliquanti choice. Two years ago Staff Photographer Neil Leifer, spotting Yawkey in Fenway Park, clicked off a few frames. "I was moved by the Yawkey portraits at the time," Delliquanti says, "but they weren't appropriate for the story we were doing. So I took the best one and stuck it in my desk. When Yawkey died last year I pulled it out. This special issue just seemed like the perfect place."

A Year in Sports probably contains some of your favorites, too. And it is one case of double vision that we hope you will gladly suffer.

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