19TH HOLE: THE READERS TAKE OVER
MOMENTS AND MEMORIES
Sir:
Thanks so much for your Silver Anniversary Issue (Aug. 13) and the remembrance of things past. As the daughter of a charter subscriber—I think the first issue is still in the top drawer of the china cabinet back home—I fondly recall the glory of those early issues of SI. They may have been "exotic" and patrician, but they were good. The full-color photos of America's Cup races and Kentucky Derbies seemed awesome to a fifth-grader in a small city in western Pennsylvania.
JOAN E. BEHRENS
Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.
Sir:
Twenty-five years ago as a 17-year-old boy I scraped together the funds for my first subscription to a magazine. It was SI, and I feel I've grown up with you. Like the 25th Anniversary Issue, I'm now quite a bit thicker, but a lot better off. Thanks for the past 25.
JERRY ANDERSON
Georgetown, S.C.
Sir:
Selection of the title SPORTS ILLUSTRATED was appropriate. Your color action photography is without equal. I have collected nearly every color page you have published.
PAUL A. WISNER
Huntsville, Ala.
Sir:
Your Silver Anniversary Issue brought back some wonderful memories. I am a charter subscriber, and I still have the first three issues of your magazine and couldn't help but thumb through them again after reading the current one. You mentioned in your LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER (Aug. 13) how many of the original staff are still with you (nine), but you didn't say how many of the original subscribers are with you now. I bet there are a lot of us around.
HARVEY HALPIN
Alameda, Calif.
•Indeed, many of our charter subscribers are still with us—there are about 34,000 that we know of—and we delight in hearing from them from time to time. And speaking of our original staffers, we should mention that in addition to the nine listed, three others, all currently working on our Copy Desk, also helped put out Vol. I, No. 1. Barbara Murray and Bob Williams were proofreaders of that first issue, and Catherine Ogilvie was a copy girl.—ED.
Sir:
I thoroughly enjoyed your Silver Anniversary Issue, but it reminded me of a very large problem here in Chicago. In the article Down Glory Road not one championship Chicago team was mentioned. Why? Probably because Chicago has not had a championship team for a long, long time. Well, maybe the Cubs can pull off some kind of miracle this year. Maybe.
DAVE COX
Midlothian, Ill.
Sir:
If, some 2,000 years from now, an archeologist opens up a time capsule and finds only a copy of your Silver Anniversary Issue, he or she will doubtless be convinced there was no sport called harness racing between the years 1954 and 1979. The thoroughbreds deserve the attention you gave them, but is it conceivable that a bicycle racer and an Alpine skier had a greater impact on the nation than, say, Bret Hanover, a pacing horse who won 62 of 68 career races, set nine speed records, was named Harness Horse of the Year three times and was the reason for attendance marks that still stand 15 years later?
DONALD P. EVANS
Vice-President, Public Relations
The U.S. Trotting Association
Columbus, Ohio
Sir:
Bill Walton has appeared on your cover 13 times and yet the one man who has absolutely dominated his sport during virtually the entire 25-year history of SI has never made it. Bill Muncey has won more than twice as many unlimited hydroplane races as his nearest competitor. He was winning the big ones in the '50s, and he is still winning in 1979—witness his most recent victory, the Seattle Seafair Trophy race on Aug. 5.
BILL CLARK
San Francisco
Sir:
You omitted Jim Bunning's perfect game in 1964!
RICHARD J. MONASTRA
Philadelphia
Sir:
I don't know what it takes to get you to realize that bowling is a sport.
KEVIN J. SCHOLL
Freeburg, Pa.
BANNISTER'S VIEW
Sir:
Sir Roger Bannister is a remarkable human being—a late-20th-century Renaissance man. His forceful, insightful essay, Beyond the Barrier, in the Aug. 13 issue covered the two most important dimensions of sport: the special world of the elite athlete, i.e., the Olympian, and the multifaceted world of "sport-for-all." Bannister's essential message is that mankind is the better for having enlarged both these dimensions.
Dr. Bannister will be in the U.S. Feb. 8-10 for an Olympic Games symposium at Skid-more College. The meetings will be open to the public. As a sport historian, I look forward to sharing the speaker's platform with Sir Roger, a uniquely cosmopolitan man.
JOHN LUCAS
Professor of Physical Education
Penn State University
State College, Pa.
Sir:
Roger Bannister's mile! It made a welcome wave and washed the world with hope. I felt it then and for years afterward.
And I felt, too, something of Bob Beamon's awe when, on television, I saw him cover his face with his hands after his prodigious leap.
Now, after reading Sir Roger's lofty footnote in your Silver Anniversary Issue about Beamon's jump being "altitude assisted," I wonder: How does Sir Roger take his record—with one asterisk (pacesetter Chris Chataway), or two (pacesetter Chris Brasher)?
FRED PEARCE
Aspen, Colo.
UNCLE ARBRIA'S PHILOSOPHY
Sir:
About halfway through The Peach Brandy Man (Aug. 13), I asked myself: What's this doing in a sports magazine? By the time I had finished the article. I could only say thank you, thank you.
A real sportsman will always have time to entertain the Uncle Arbrias of this world. Yes, Don Sutton is a fine man. And Phillip Timothy Gay is a fine writer.
GARY BLEVINS
Forth Worth
Sir:
The Peach Brandy Man was one of the most heartwarming and interesting stories I have ever read. Arbria Johnson's philosophy concerning man's relationship to his fellowman is very similar to my own: if you like a person, "it don't matter 'bout color, never has."
ROBBYE W. TUCKER
Melbourne, Fla.
Sir:
Phillip Gay's article was a wonderful story about a wonderful man.
JAMIE HINMAN
Pittsburgh
Address editorial mail to SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, Time & Life Building, Rockefeller Center, New York, New York, 10020.
