Sports Intro

It’s not because I was ever that good at them. My greatest athletic achievement was third team all-league second baseman in high school, an honor I earned primarily because I was a good bunter.

Not being a star didn’t matter. I was always as interested in the idea of sports as actually playing.

All of my earliest attempts at self-expression concerned baseball: a miniature Yankee stadium made out of cardboard complete with lights and changeable scoreboard, a papier-mache Bucky Dent puppet, and a dressing style that in retrospect seems like an elaborate piece of performance art.

From ages four to seven I wore a full Yankee uniform (including plastic batting helmet, stirrups and often eye-black) almost every day. I insisted it be washed (when it absolutely had to be) at night. In every photo record from those years, including weddings and bar mitzvahs, I am fully suited.

It wasn’t just a fashion statement. It reflected a world view, a cultural consciousness shaped by sports.

I learned long division by calculating earned run averages. I learned how to read by studying the back pages of the Daily News. Wade Boggs taught me about adultery, Len Bias about cocaine, George Steinbrenner about high finance, Sam Spence about instrumentals. I learned about font, layout, and photography from Topps, Fleer, and Donruss.

Sports taught me about the pain of loss. When the Dodgers took the series from the Yankees in 1981, I questioned the existence of God. And after the Jets dropped the Mud Bowl in ’82, I was officially a heathen.

But as a fan, the pain of losing a game was temporary. The pain I saw in the faces of my fallen heroes — Doc, Darryl, Charlie Hustle, Iron Mike — was permanent. Shame, humiliation, addiction, depression — I was both saddened and fascinated by their torments.

In editing this issue, I have tried to bring all of this personal and cultural sporting history to the table and create my ideal magazine: a concoction of 60s Esquire, Sports Illustrated, Mad, Eros, and Batman. To make it happen I needed every ounce of help from the Frank Staff, family, old friends and new co-conspirators (led by amazing Tyson artist Mickey Duzyj).

There’s no “I” in team, but in the immortal words of Allen Iverson, “There’s two I’s in 'Championship.'”