LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER

You don't need a program to tell the players, but as the masthead now indicates, several members of our team have changed positions.

Mervin D. Hyman, for nine years our chief of research, has become assistant to the managing editor, a job which entails a wide variety of administrative and fiscal duties, most notably acting as liaison between the editorial side of the magazine and advertising and publishing.

Merv is one of the original SPORTS ILLUSTRATED staffers, having joined the magazine in April 1954, four months before the first issue appeared. During his first 15 years he was a writer who principally covered college football and basketball and made, and maintained, an extraordinary number of valuable sporting contacts. "When I became chief of research, I missed writing," he says, "so I compensated by doing three books—all of them about sports, of course—and I intend to be writing more in the future."

As chief of research, Merv was in charge of our reporting and research staff and, while his name has been rising on our masthead, he has been pleased to see reporters who worked under him move up, too. Nine are now staff writers, one an associate editor and another a senior editor.

Moving into Merv's old slot is Christiana Walford, who came to us in 1966 after two years in the Peace Corps spent in the small Moroccan city of Agadir. She has been a researcher for 12 years and Merv's deputy for the last four of them. "Part of the joy of research is being a detective," she says. "You sometimes have to go to ridiculous lengths to pin down a fact, but it is a part of the puzzle and a form of adventure. I have never felt like a librarian, I have felt like a sleuth. But I'm eager to take on this new job. It's a way to enrich my life."

Not that Crissy's life is exactly impoverished. Her current interests include playing Bach on the flute, reading mysteries in Italian, climbing mountains, playing soccer (as "the worst person," she says) on the Fuchsias, a coed team that plays once a week in Central Park and, until she completed it last spring, making her own harpsichord. In between, she runs. Crissy began running several years ago on the streets of New York. She now runs almost every day, as far as she finds pleasant—maybe two miles, maybe 10. In December she ran the Jersey Shore marathon in 3:41.32, finishing 850th in a field of 2,000, and is training for another marathon this spring.

The new deputy chief of research is Myra Gelband, who is more interested in golf than in running. Myra has been assigned to golf for four years and will continue to work that beat, so her fans—who include Jack and Barbara and Tom and Linda—will still be seeing her on the tour.

As far as we can see, everybody comes out ahead. You, too.

PHOTO

HYMAN: A NEW JOB FOR AN OLD HAND