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

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

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.

Great blog!