Highlights from those vintage Sports Illustrateds

As promised, I won't do a thorough rehash of those vintage Sports Illustrated magazines I recently acquired. As can be expected from the magazine in that era, there was lots of fun baseball content, plus articles that could make activities as varied as running, karate and hitchhiking entertaining to read about. The advertisements were an interesting slice of late 60s/early 70s life, perhaps most notably for the many familiar brands with unfamiliar products - John Deere bicycles, BF Goodrich sneakers, Hilton Rent-A-Car, Field & Stream tobacco, even clothing ads by chemical companies DuPont and Celanese in this heyday of artificial fabrics. 

Here are some of my favorite little bits, most of them comical, from the baseball articles in these issues.

1970 - "Gene Mauch, Montreal Expos manager, on hearing of a battle between teenage groups in Brooklyn in which one side had faulty ammunition in the gun barrels: 'They must have been an expansion gang.'"

1970 - Roberto Clemente, after hitting four home runs in Wrigley Field, asked how many home runs he'd hit if he played for the Cubs: "There's no point talking about it because I'll never play for the Cubs. It's like asking somebody if they would mind being married to Raquel Welch. Sure they wouldn't, but there's no sense talking about it because it'll never happen." Clemente has been so deified since his death, it was interesting to see an earthier side of him.

1970 - From an article about Boston fans (that, among other things, addressed the serious speculation about an all-purpose stadium replacing Fenway Park) - "Before he ever strode to home plate in a major league game, some kid infielder named Alvarado had been come at so many ways during spring training that he was beginning to resemble the bridge at Chappaquiddick. Was Alvarado ready? Should he play third base or short? Switch Petrocelli to third? Are you crazy? Will this affect Petrocelli? Will it, in fact, affect Petrocelli if he even thinks Alvarado is being considered for short? Will it affect Alvarado if he thinks Petrocelli is affected by this possible switch?"

1968 - 30 game winner Denny McLain palling around with Steve Allen, Ed Sullivan and the Smothers Brothers. The Smothers Brothers TV special never ended up happening but Tommy Smothers did manage McLain's brief musical career.

1968 - On President Johnson's VIP section in the Astrodome - "Included in the complex, according to a publicity release, is a presidential suite, which has been given a security clearance by the Secret Service and is equipped with a direct telephone hookup to the Russian hot line. . . . It sounds wonderfully sporting, but we sure hope nobody tries to call a bookie on the wrong phone."

1968 - "James Garner, actor, describing what it was like to attend a sports celebrity awards dinner: 'I felt like my bubble-gum card collection had come to life." Say, that would be a good name for a blog!

1968 special on the hottest rookie prospects with this great cover featuring: Don Pepper, John Bench, Alan Foster, Mike Torrez and Cisco Carlos.

1968 - From the rookies article: "There are a Nash, a Ford and a Messersmith . . . "

". . . as well as a Moses, a Cain and a Christian. . . . "

"You will find rookies named Cash, Bonds, Money, Crook, Rooker and Fink. . . ."

"There are also some who are named Weisenberg and Scheinblum, Kelly, Duffie, Ryan and O'Brien, and there is even a Lum."

1967 - "Willing to try anything, Jack Fisher of New York (2-4) let a waitress who said she practiced voodoo snip a few hairs from his head in the hope that it would bring him the good luck she promised. 'I wrap them in tinfoil and bury them at midnight in the light of the moon,' she said. Thus awesomely armed, Fisher and the Mets went forth and lost to the Cubs, 3-0."

1966 - Not all the funny stuff is really funny. A profile of the Astros talks about catcher John Bateman's "friendly" needling of teammates, such as a Holocaust joke for Jewish teammate Barry Latman and using the n-word (printed in full by SI, and up for viewing on their archive) to describe teammates Joe Morgan, Sonny Jackson and Jim Wynn. Morgan and Wynn are quoted as saying the ribbing doesn't bother than them, but one would assume that those quotes likely did not indicate how those players actually felt about Bateman's racist ribbing.