Good-bye, SI

A few months ago I wrote about possibly not renewing my 55-year-old subscription to Sports Illustrated. I'd just gotten my third renewal notice and the time for making a decision whether to renew or not was drawing nigh.

Then, on Thursday, I received my fourth and final notice. Or so it said, with "Final Notice" written in big block letters across the envelope and in smaller letters telling me what a deal I could have for being such a loyal subscriber.

Some of my favorite issues of Sports Illustrated.

 I'd pretty much made up my mind that I was not going to renew when the very next day, Friday, a story crossed my computer's news feed that Sports Illustrated's publisher, The Arena Group, was laying off some of the magazine's staff after SI failed to make a $3.75 million payment to its license holder, Authentic.

"Whaaaaat?" I asked myself.

The first thing I thought of was that this had to be some  kind of joke. I mean, Sports Illustrated had been one of the country's most respected platforms for sports journalism – no, for journalism, period – for decades. The writing was crisp, original and incisive. The photography was world class and involved. There was nothing else like it. I awaited each weekly issue for the mail to arrive with great anticipation and often carried around copies as if they were the Bible (which, in a way, they were).

The reason I thought this might be a joke is because Sports Illustrated played one of the most notorious April Fool's Day hoaxes ever on its readers – and others – when celebrated writer George Plimpton wrote a story about a baseball phenom named Sidd Finch, a Mets pitching prospect who could throw a baseball 168 miles per hour without warming up and while wearing only one shoe (that should have been a clue right there).

I halfway believed the story because, you know, it was in Sports Illustrated. I halfway couldn't believe it because it was so unbelievable. Peter Ueberroth, the MLB commissioner at the time, even contacted the Mets to find out more about this guy.

When it became clear this whole thing was an April Fool's hoax (April 1, 1985, was the cover date), I briefly wondered if the solemn, unspoken contract between journalist and reader for providing the truth above all else had been broken.

Then I got my swimsuit issue and all was forgiven.

But the recent news that Sports Illustrated was furloughing its staff was unnerving, even though the magazine was losing its relevance for me. Like much of print journalism, it was foundering in murky waters created by the Internet, social media and AI. Weekly issues became biweekly, and then, monthly.

Some of my conservative friends, who thought the mag was too liberal to begin with what with transgender swimsuit cover models, shook their heads and said, "See what happens when you go woke?"

I don't subscribe to woke paranoia, but I can no longer subscribe to a magazine that is trying to find its niche with a younger crowd that Tik Toks its way through the sidelines.

It's still unclear if this is the actual end for SI. There's a chance it could hang around for another three months or so before a solution is found, but that remains to be seen.

Steve Huffman, a friend of mine and a former sports writer himself, recently wrote in a Facebook post that "if SI existed as it once existed, people would continue to support it. I know I'd continue to subscribe."

Hear, hear.