Does Sports Illustrated still matter?
A handful of years back the editor at the Kansas City Star told me in no uncertain terms that it did not. It was a joke, the dying embers of an outdated dream.
Seems SI had been doing a bit of fishing in the Star’s pond – and a year or two later it actually succeeded in catching big fish, sports columnist Joe Posnanski. So it must have mattered even then – at least to Joe – back in 2009 when the newspaper was hemorrhaging both journalists and journalism in a free fall that continues to this date.
Posnanski has since moved on from SI, although he was quoted not two months back in a somewhat prophetic SI cover story about the MLB team the entire world is now breathlessly talking about – so much for the so-called cover jinx.
And with a circulation of more than 3 million – versus the Star’s 200,000 – one could make a case for Sports Illustrated still mattering.
Just as the late August 2014 SI story, “It Was Only A Matter Of Time” about the Kansas City Royals mattered – and frankly it still does.
Remember at the end of July when the Royals let the trade deadline elapse with zero acquisitions?
On August 1st, the day after that deadline, KCC columnist Brandon Leftridge let the 55-52 Royals have it for sitting on their butts while rivals Detroit and Oakland made significant trade gains.
“(The Royals) are a team of prospects who haven’t quite made it, old castoffs who washed their way back into town, and enough broken dreams to fill a Tom Waits song,” Leftridge steamed. “They do not appear to possess ANY organizational philosophy other than, ‘You should see these guys in batting practice—they can really put it over the wall.’ ”
Hey, who could blame Brandon after watching disappointing Royals season after Royals season wither into another year of Octoberless baseball?
Posnanski
Even nice guy Posnanski dogged the Royals for their trade inaction, SI noted.
“This was the time for the Royals to make a choice,” Posnanski blogged. “They needed to be buyers. They needed to be sellers. They needed to be SOMETHING. And instead, like it has been for most of the last quarter century, they were nothing. And that is hard to take.”
A few weeks later though the publication the Star had written off – Sports Illustrated – was singing the Royal’s praises and lauding GM Dayton Moore and manager Ned Yost for empowering its players in what SI called the team’s “inspiration theory.”
Because standing pat through the deadline “empowered its players to take matters into their own hands,” SI asserted.
“It gave us a set-confidence yeah,” Alex Gordon told the zine.
SI also championed longtime, sunny side up Royals fan SungWoo Lee of South Korea. Lee visited KC in August during which time the team won four of the five games he attended and was treated like a celebrity. He even danced Gangnam style on the Royals jumbotron.
Looking ahead toward an ultra bright future for the Royal’s, SI noted that KC ranked first in FanGraph’s Ultimate Zone Rating – a metric that measures how many runs a defense saves or permits compared with an average expectation.
Got that?
SI further calculated that Royals pitching had netted a 50-3 win / loss ratio in games in which the team was ahead after 6 innings.
SI’s late summer bottom line: “There are reasons – actually pitching, fielding and even hitting-based reasons – to believe that an even greater story might be told this fall in Kansas City.”
So yeah, I’d say Sports Illustrated still matters. And for all practical purposes, they’re the ones who more-or-less helped jump start the bandwagon the entire country is clambering aboard as we speak.
I knew you could figure out an angle to use the Royals success to bash The Star! Now…how about a World Series prediction from the Watson’s Girl?
Actually,long as you’re going to critique try and keep up, Mysterious
I just through lavishing praise on the Star’s coverage of the Royals a couple days ago.
If you wanna play shrink, get a degree.
Hey, wouldn’t you know it…
I’ve been combing the web for Posnanski takes on the Royals and suddenly the newspaper reels him back in Sunday for a front page column about the team.
I strongly suspected that Joe was probably bursting at the seams to write more about this year’s Royals, but given the national bent of his new gig limited himself to just a few columns.
A few damn good columns, I might add.
This gave him an outlet to send one out to the homies, pick up a peso or two and plug his employer NBC’s new website – This is Sportsworld – which the Star did at the end of his column
SI is a terrible magazine. Don’t believe crap they write. They will write anything to stir up interest/controversy whether it’s true or not. Anything to fit the narrative.
Well, I’m not a follower so I can’t address your point either way.
The Royals story was well done though and somewhat ahead of the game.
Some beautiful pictures of KC players have appeared on SI over the years… whether jinxed or not, were no encores/big second acts.
Len Dawson appeared on the cover SI post Superbowl 4… KC never sniffed a SB again.
Chiefs Woody Green was the cover boy as a rookie, 1974… the guy who looked like the next Gale Sayers in college saw his career ended due injury just three years in.
Trent Green (‘The Chiefs Perfect’) started 9-0 & got the cover 2003… ended one and done post season.
Jamaal Charles appeared on the SI cover 2013… another 9-0 start ended with yet another one & done post season, arguably the ‘most humiliating’ defeat Kansas City history, any sport.
Coincidences, all of them? Just mediocre players and teams same that would have laid copious eggs, regardless?
2014, Royals are on the cover… with apologies to ‘(Warren) Spahn and (Johnny) Sain and pray for rain’ – ‘Shields & Cain and pray for… a hurricane’ (not named GIANTS.)
You failed to mention Steve Balboni on the cover in October of 1985 and unless your memory failed (at your advanced age quite possible) they won the world series. So your point again?
Failed to mention several others as well since 1985… 29 years vs 1 suggests Kerouac prevails once more, unlike the Royals.
🙂
But SungWoo Lee has returned, remember what happened the last time he was here?
Steve Bartman gave him personalized post season instructions on the finer points of fan interference?