Dear TIME-Reader

DearTIME-Reader:

Roy Campanella, whose impish, pudgy pan grins at you from the cover of a current magazine noted for its jinxing powers, today hammered the hex into the left-field bleachers with two down and two on in the ninth to give the Brooks an 11-10 tingler . . .

THUS New York Daily News Sportswriter Dick Young last week reported the victory over Milwaukee that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers 15 1/2 games out in front in the National League race. Actually, the myth of the TIME sports-cover jinx has never been more than just a myth since it first started back in the '30s. As happens to everybody, TIME sports-cover subjects sometimes had tough breaks. In most cases, they went right on setting new records and winning new honors.

Among them: baseball's Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle, golf's Ben Hogan, Decathlon Champion Bob Mathias. But never has the myth been so effectively--and quickly--exploded as by Campy's game-winning homer.

AS TIME'S sports jinx myth was dying, TIME'S youngest sister publication, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, reached its lively first birthday. In its anniversary issue this week, SI assays the gold in what it calls the new golden age of sports, and reports on some of its own accomplishments. SI has made some notable contributions to sports coverage in its first year: a wide use of color photography; detailed Previews of major events; the new Conversation Piece, a revealing report on sports greats in their own words, e.g., Pitcher Preacher Roe's admission that he threw illegal spit balls.

Si's regular staff of editors also rounded up a roster of expert contributors, ranging from Herbert Warren Wind in golf and Davis Cup Captain William F. Talbert in tennis to such talented amateurs as Nobelman William Faulkner. The Faulkner story of the Kentucky Derby so impressed Bing Crosby that The Groaner read it in three installments on his radio show.

Other SI stories made their impact, too. At a party meeting, President Ike Eisenhower recalled the SI story about the atheist who didn't care who won the Notre Dame-S.M.U. game, and the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale began one of his Sunday sermons: "There is a new magazine, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, that has in this week's issue a story on the use of prayer . . ."

Says SI Publisher Harry Phillips: "A new magazine is like a new acquaintance ; both take more than a bit of knowing. I think we made a good first impression, and now that people know us better, we are making real friends (more than 600,000 subscribers). Only last week a group of professionals in publishing, whose opinion I value, told me: 'You have a hit on your hands.' "

Cordially yours, James A. Linen

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