Past Masters

Three months ago an e-mail from Marv Fleming, a tight end on the
'72 Dolphins, landed in the inbox of senior editor Larry Burke,
coordinator of SI's three annual Where Are They Now issues.
Fleming was lobbying for a story about his team on the 30th
anniversary of pro football's only perfect season. Burke found
Fleming's suggestion--followed by his teammates' phone
numbers--intriguing and set the story in motion. "They have a
singular claim to greatness," Burke says, "but they feel that
they have not gotten the respect they deserve."

Not all of our annual paean to the past fell into our hands.
Burke deployed reporters Albert Chen, Pete McEntegart and
Kristin Green Morse to track down former stars. Deputy art
director Linda Root supervised the design of 52 pages, while
deputy picture editor Maureen Grise dispatched 40 photographers.
Grise showed her knack for cutting red tape by securing the
helicopter and airplane permits needed to photograph the former
stadium sites on pages 98-103. "It's not every day I get to talk
to Oscar Robertson, Zola Budd and the FAA," she says.

Walter Iooss Jr.
Iooss has been an SI staff photographer since 1961. His
portraits of Oscar Robertson and Paul Hornung (pages 78 and
118), seen with his shots from a generation ago, delicately
trace his own career as well as his subjects'.

Leigh Montville
Montville (Farewell, Teddy Ballgame, page 44) was an SI senior
writer from '89 to 2001. He is the author of At the Altar of
Speed: The Fast Life and Tragic Death of Dale Earnhardt, Sr. A
New England native, Montville has nurtured a lifelong fascination
with Ted Williams, whose biography he is currently writing.

P.J. O'Rourke
O'Rourke (Electoral Dysfunction, page 29) has leaped nimbly from
The Atlantic Monthly and other journals of political opinion to
make his SI debut. The author of Parliament of Whores and
numerous other books, O'Rourke pondered sports and politics and
found the latter at least one branch lower on the evolutionary
tree.

COLOR PHOTO: PETER GREGOIRE (ROOT, BURKE, GRISE) RETRO ROCKETS Root, Burke and Grise (from left) got caught up.

B/W PHOTO: BOB PETERSON (IOOSS, LEFT) in 1963

COLOR PHOTO: WALTER IOOSS JR. (IOOSS, RIGHT) in 1999

COLOR ILLUSTRATION: ILLUSTRATION BY BARRY BLITT