LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER

During the 10 years he has been at SI, Don Delliquanti, our assistant picture editor, has written stories on subjects as diverse as North Carolina's four corners basketball offense and Joe Pepitone's hair; edited pictures of three Olympics and seven Super Bowls; and kept us laughing in the hallways, at staff meetings and on the Softball field. The Year in sports, the fourth such annual issue we've published, is in good measure Delliquanti's baby. In addition to his regular work, Delliquanti coordinated the process of reducing the thousands of frames our photographers shot to the ones chosen for this issue. It was a labor of love for Delliquanti, whose twin passions are sports and sports photography.

"This is our chance to show pictures we really like," he says. "In regular issues of the magazine, we concentrate on shots that illustrate the week's news. So some less timely but more spectacular pictures don't make it."

Nonetheless, Delliquanti's favorite photo in the issue is the one of the underwater violinist on page 144, which did run, last July. "I set that up myself," Don says. "The violinist wanted to bring his sister-she played the piano underwater-but we were only interested in him."

Because he's a picture editor, many people assume that Delliquanti is expert with a camera himself. Not so, he says. "Things mechanical, like cameras, mess me up. You should have seen me on the ski slopes the other week when my zipper broke. To me, manual dexterity is the name of the high school Sidney Wicks attended in LA."

Fortunately, Delliquanti's contribution to this issue required no more equipment than a light table and a loupe. Not to mention a very discriminating eye.

PHOTO

Delliquanti: with a loupe and a laugh.