Covering Ourselves
You probably have already noticed something unusual about this
week's issue: It has two covers. Here's why. When our Sept. 14
issue closed on Monday night, Sept. 7, Mark McGwire had hit 61
home runs to equal the 37-year-old single-season record set by
Roger Maris. Not knowing when McGwire would smack number 62, we
published the Sept. 14 issue as scheduled, with a cover of
McGwire belting number 61 (above, left), and made arrangements
to create an Extra Edition of that issue just for newsstands if
he broke the record within three days after our close. Sure
enough, McGwire connected at 8:18 p.m. CDT on Sept. 8 at Busch
Stadium.
In St. Louis five SI photographers captured the moment with 21
cameras (some remote-controlled) from seemingly every angle,
save the top of the Arch. Director of photography Steve Fine and
baseball photo editor Maureen Grise rushed the 32 rolls of film
to a lab 15 miles away for developing. Meanwhile, in the Busch
Stadium press box, senior writer Tom Verducci put the finishing
touches on his story and filed it to our editorial offices in
New York City at 10:30 p.m. EDT, barely more than an hour after
the historic clout. Two dozen staffers assembled in the City
That Never Sleeps to edit Verducci's piece, select pictures from
the 41 low-resolution digitized images transmitted by Fine and
Grise, design a new layout and insert a three-page foldout
detailing each of McGwire's 62 blasts (the same foldout begins
on page 6 of this issue). High-resolution versions of the chosen
photos were transmitted to New York by 5:30 a.m. The finished
package was then zapped to the printer in time for our 6 a.m.
deadline, and the CNN/SI Web site posted the new cover and
photos and Verducci's story a few hours later. The Extra
Edition, featuring the cover above, on the right, reached
newsstands across the country by rush hour on Thursday morning.
We knew that subscribers would like to have the 62! cover to
commemorate McGwire's feat, so we reprinted it in this issue. We
like to think that, like McGwire, we're touching all the bases.
COLOR PHOTO: V.J. LOVERO [Cover of Sept. 14, 1998 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED featuring Mark McGwire]
COLOR PHOTO: DAVID E. KLUTHO [Cover of Sept. 14, 1998 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED Extra Edition newsstand issue featuring Mark McGwire]