FROM THE PUBLISHER

General managers of sports franchises supervise the front office, see that the bills are paid, make trades and negotiate contracts. As general manager of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, Ann Moore's duties are not all that different. "What does someone like the Mets' G.M., Frank Cashen, do?" says Moore, 37. "Someone has to keep it all running. I try to keep everybody happy—advertisers, subscribers, employees."

Like any good general manager, Moore knows something about personnel moves. Ann was an Air Force brat. She and her mother and father—Bea and Lieut. Col. Monte Sommovigo (Ret.)—lived in Mississippi, Japan, Florida, Virginia, Alabama and California, all before Ann reached high school. "We moved around so much I didn't know where I was born until I was 17," she says. For the record, it was Biloxi, Miss.

Moore learned early in life that sports can be profitable. For Christmas when she was 10, Ann's father gave her a basketball and set up a hoop in the driveway. "I became such a good shot that I'd win quarters from the boys in my fifth-grade class," says Moore. After her family settled down in McLean, Va., Ann played on the McLean High field hockey team, but gave up girls' basketball to become a cheerleader.

While she was majoring in political science at Vanderbilt, Moore decided to learn a sport she could enjoy as an adult. She got an A in bowling, after the golf class she had signed up for was canceled. But because Moore hadn't officially dropped the golf class, she also ended up with an F in golf on her transcript. That, however, didn't stop her from getting into Harvard's business school, from which she earned an M.B.A. in 1978.

In a way, Moore's best sport has probably been tennis. In 1973 she was living with two roommates in a house in Boston. One night, one of the roommates invited three men over for dinner. During the evening, Ann sneaked upstairs to watch the tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, the famous Battle of the Sexes. One of the guests also ducked out of dinner and found his way to the TV. Eleven months later, Ann and Donovan Moore were married.

The Moores—Donovan is a screenwriter—live with their three-year-old son, Brendan, in an 1854 brownstone in Brooklyn Heights. When Brendan goes to college, he will have a subscription to SI, just as his mother did at Vanderbilt. His will be addressed to "Mr...." just as his mother's was. Mailing labels are also a concern for our G.M.

PHOTO

LANE STEWART

Two of a kind: general managers Moore and Cashen.