Closet hoarders Mike Marando and Bob Moffitt have been reading Sports Illustrated since they were old enough to get shot down by girls and swing and miss at curve balls. They have different takes on recent news regarding the failing health of the magazine.

Mike: A week ago, news spread that Sports Illustrated announced it is laying off nearly all of its staff, which puts the future of the magazine in doubt. Known simply as “SI,” the mag for years was the standard-bearer of great sports writing, dating back to the days of Dick Gordon, Peter Gammons, Robert H. Boyle, and Jim Murray. These were just a few writers who became all-stars in their own right because the craft they displayed.

Bob: They told readers about their heroes, anti-heroes, and…the unknown. Later, names like Frank Deford, Rick Telander, Rick Reilly, Steve Rushin, and John Wertheim gave us the same great storytelling, humor and reasons to think about the state of sports and humanity. It is kind of surreal to consider the magazine has been delivering for eight decades the kind of insight and the kind of writing that made us want to read stories about events that we had likely seen with our own eyes…

Mike: I happen to own a few timeless treasures, which I was compelled to dust off when I heard the terrible news regarding SI’s “restructuring.” I have copies of the first and second issues of SI, dated August 16 and August 23, 1954. These issues contained special, uncut inserts of Topps baseball cards. The first issue featured 27 stars of the day, including the great Willie Mays, Ted Williams, Gil Hodges, Jackie Robinson, and Duke Snider. The second issue featured the 1953-54 Yankees of New York, including the equally-great Mickey Mantle, who does not appear in the regular 1954 Topps baseball set.

Bob: My mom got me a Sport magazine with Dallas Cowboys Danny White and Roger Staubach in it in 1981. She must have seen how I kept reading the same damn issue over and over and a couple of years later she got me a year subscription to SI. We didn’t have much money, so this was a big deal. She tried to turn the subscription into inspiration for me to get better grades. She did not realize her son was kind of a moron with little common sense. The subscription expired, but I saved every issue and asked every year for a new one. After four years without any straight-A’s, I finally had to purchase a subscription myself. I was a senior in high school. Mark McGwire and Will Clark were on the cover of the first issue I received. I thought it was for sure the greatest purchase that any 17-year-old kid had ever made. I’m still pretty sure I was right. I saved every issue for the next 25 years.

Occasionally, I would open a box and sift through them, remembering the playoff shockers and the profiles of athletes I loved…and hated. I was about 40, when my wife informed me that we really did not have room for eight boxes of “crap” that wouldn’t be of any value. I couldn’t really argue with her. So, the plan became to decoupage the covers under plastic and decorate the garage floor. I saved not only the covers but some pages that had black and white photos of the heroes I had read about but who played before I could remember or that had photos of my favorite players at the time. Sure, chucking those magazines helped free up space, but it also removed a little part of my soul. The decoupage project has never come to pass…

Mike: There are many great memories within these pages and of course, the baseball cards that bring me back to a much simpler time! I got the first issue thanks to a former boss at the California State Capitol. She said, “Someone gave me this. I’m not a baseball fan. Want ’em?” I couldn’t say yes fast enough. I bought the second issue about 15 years ago.”

Bob: It almost seemed like this was destined to happen eventually. I, for one, had never been able to make the jump to the online version. The internet had already begun to infringe on the willingness of readers to wait until Tuesday to read about events they could find online today…and that was before Covid. The response to the coronavirus took sports away from the world and SI was forced to cut back to being a monthly periodical instead of a weekly. I can’t say I have enjoyed the monthly version, which has lacked the kinds of stories I loved. A whole issue devoted to fitness or how much money was in which sport left me feeling like I had wasted ten precious minutes on the can. As it turns out, the lifeless writing, was often the result of lifeless writers. This was from WBAL in November:

“Sports Illustrated on Monday said it had deleted several articles from its website after a report found the once-celebrated legacy magazine had published the pieces under fake author names and profile images generated by artificial intelligence.”

Though I am sad SI seems to be at its end, I am hopeful that a new version of it will emerge. Reading and writing are not dead, contrary to what parents and some school teachers think. The popularity of books these days is a testament to that. So, all we can really do is say, “Thank you” for many hours of thoughtful stories over the years. Without them, you wouldn’t be reading this now. I never dreamed I would publish anything related to sports, but here we are. We may not be Peter Gammons or Rick Reilly, but because of them, we try.