Cover Coverage
Posted: April 27th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball, Media | 19 Comments »
As first reported by my good friend Bob Dutton of The Kansas City Star, Zack Greinke will appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Rumor has it that the author of the upcoming book The Machine authored the profile.
Well, worth reading that Star story by the way. Hilarious quotes from Zack on getting the cover.
And I should say you might wanna come on back at Noon Eastern time on Tuesday … when we we will unveil the World Premiere of the first Kansas City Royals Sports Illustrated cover since 1993.*
*List of Kansas City Royals’ Sports Illustrated covers:
April 5, 1993: David Cone, “Nothing But Heat.”
Oct. 5, 1992: George Brett, “His Royal Highness.”
June 12, 1989: Bo Jackson, “Nobody Hits Them Like BO”
July 14, 1986: Bo Jackson in Memphis Chicks uniform, “Bold Move Bo.”
Nov. 4, 1985: World Series celebration shot, “A Royal Crown.”
May 12, 1984: George Brett, “Brett’s Set To Bust Loose.”
Aug. 10, 1981: George Brett and Mike Schmidt, “Here We Go Again.”
June 9, 1980: Darrell Porter, “KC Looks O.K.”
March 20, 1978: Clint Hurdle, “This Year’s Phenom.”
June 21, 1976: George Brett, “Hot Bat at the Hot Corner.”
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ZACK ATTACK!!!!
I really hope you get a couple good Zack-ish quotes in there. “Probably since NASCAR” thats great.
Awesome. I’m looking forward to it.
I like the picture caption on the Star link: “Zack Greinke goes to 4-0 with a dazzling 6-1 win over Detroit. Joakim Soria has a sore shoulder.”
Laugh.
Well, that’s too bad. As Curt Gowdy used to say, the kid seemed to have his whole future ahead of him.
We all know that Zack would’ve posed for a cover shot if they had allowed him to pose as a hitter instead of a pitcher. Poz, you should have been on that.
I LOVE IT! I was born in Topeka on March 20, 1978 and Clint Hurdle was on the SI cover that day!
March 20, 1978: Clint Hurdle, “This Year’s Phenom.â€
Fantastic!
You mean Brett went through the entire 1980 season without getting on the cover of SI? What the hell?
Rany predicted this cover! Don’t think he expected to see it quite this soon. Congrats, Joe and congrats to Zaq!
http://www.ranyontheroyals.com/2009/04/future-has-arrived.html
Paul:
Well, see, that’s why he didn’t totally collapse down the stretch and end up hitting .340.
IMO The Hammer probably should have been on the cover at some point in the mid-90s. But congratulations to the MVP 2005 hero!
Joe- you missed a cover! The first 1981 cover of Brett and Schmidt. It was the baseball preview. Same photo as August 81 issue.
Great blog!
You forgot August 3, 1981 – George Brett and Mike Schmidt “Baseball Preview Issue.” They used the same cover 2 weeks in a row, 1 as the baseball preview issue and then the 2nd week as “Here we go again.”
Hmm, I thought Dye, Beltran and Damon were on a cover together in the late 90s, early 2000s. Am I making that up in my mind? I remember the story about them.
My bad – I had the date wrong, it was 4/13/81. But I was right about SI using the same picture of George Brett and Mike Schmidt twice as the cover.
Joe if you jinx Greinke we will riot outside the Star building.
Our next cover:
Right-hander Luke Hochevar produced another strong start Monday in limiting Oklahoma City to one unearned run in six innings in Class AAA Omaha’s 8-1 victory in the first game of a doubleheader.
Hochevar improved to 4-0 and lowered his ERA to 1.44 in 25 innings over his four starts. He permitted just four hits while striking out seven and walking two.
I’m with Paul White–what in the world was going on in late summer/early fall of 1980 that George Brett didn’t make the cover once?
Actually, as I’m typing this it occurs to me that I’m an English Professor on my office hours, and no students have dropped by (odd, since they have finals next week), so how about I do a little “scholarly research.” Looking at Brett’s day-by-day batting average, he got to .401 on August 17, and from then until September 19, he was at or above .400 all but seven days, and never dropped below .396. Starting September 20 he slumped a bit, all the way down to .380 before getting to .390 at the end. But certainly you would think that in early September he would have been a prime candidate for the cover.
So what was on the SI cover from mid-August until the end of September?
8-11: Olympic 1,500 Champ Sebastian Coe
8-18: J.R. Richard, Astros (seems to have been a feature piece about his medical problems)
8-25: Al Bumbry, Orioles (“Baltimore Battles Back”–good prediction, SI)
9-1: Hugh Green, U of Pitt (College Football Preview)
9-8: Browns receiver, I believe Dave Logan (NFL Preview)
9-15: John McEnroe, US Open Champ
9-22: Billy Sims, Detroit Lions
9-29: Muhammad Ali (preview of October 2 Holmes-Ali bout)
So, to sum it up, why wasn’t Brett ever on a cover during his crazy 1980 season? Largely it was an issue of timing. Most of the decisions, I think, seem like good editorial choices nearly 30 years later. Obviously SI is going to do college and pro football previews, which happened to fall right when Brett’s .400 chase was probably at maximum media exposure. McEnroe and Ali are two of the most compelling media figures (not just sports figures) of the last quarter of the 20th Century, and they had big stuff going on. You have to do one Olympics cover. The J.R. Richard thing was a weird story about a guy who had been a very good player. Really, the questionable covers are the Orioles on 8-25 (though that probably went to press a good week before the cover date, and at that point Brett was just beginning to rumble) and the Billy Sims cover. The Sims cover, in retrospect, maybe should have been Brett–I’m sorry, Sims was a great rookie, but Brett was the bigger story.
But of course, we don’t know what else was going on. Were there interview requests that went un-honored? Did SI feel like the newspapers and nightly news had Brett covered, and they wanted to go a different way?
As a side-note, the Royals are not featured as such on the 10-27-80 cover, but Darrell Porter is in the cover photo of Mike Schmidt batting.
The sources for all this mess:
Brett’s game-by-game stats:
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/players/hittinglogs.php?p=brettge01&y=1980
SI 1980 cover archive:
http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/cover/select/1980-01-01/1980-12-31/dd/1/index.htm
There are a few other SI covers that had Royals on them:
October 28, 1985 – The World Series – has Ozzie Smith jumping over a sliding Steve Balboni
April 20, 1987 – What They Make (The Salaries of Every Player in the Major Leagues) – George Brett, Danny Tartabull, and Willie Wilson each have small photos on the cover
December 14, 1987 – Which way, Bo? — Photo of Bo Jackson with the Royals and another photo with the Raiders
– a couple others that feature Bo Jackson out of uniform –
October 30, 1995 – What became of Bo? Portrait of Bo Jackson (not in a Royals uniform)
June 30, 2003 – Where are they now? Bo Jackson (Bo knows cookin’) – Photo of Bo in a Chef’s outfit
[...] I just got wind from my close personal friend Joe Posnanski that Greinke will be on the cover of the next issue of SI. The first Royal since 1993. I…I do think I’ll be purchasing that [...]