The Tuesday Report:: May 5, 2008 Kosuke Fukudome

A few years ago, while holed up in my hotel room in Noboribetsu, a town in the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, I watched a game between the Sapporo Ham Fighters vs the Yomimiuri Giants. I loved the faster pace and the rowdy fans. Even though I wasn't familiar with the players, it was a very entertaining game.

This week's cover features Chicago Cubs' rookie Kosuke Fukudo, making him the fifth Japanese baseball player to make the cover of Sports Illustrated. He joins the company of Sadaharu Oh, Hisanobu Watanabe, Ichiro, and Daisuke to have the honor of being on the cover of SI. It'll be a couple of weeks before we get a quantity of these covers, but check out the other Japanese baseball covers that are in stock.

August 15, 1977 - Sadaharu Oh (Yomimiuri Giants)

October 31, 1994 - Hisanobu Watanabe (Seibu Lions)

May 28, 2001 - Ichiro Suzuki (No Mailing Label)

July 8, 2002 - Ichiro Suzuki

March 26, 2007 - Daisuke Matsuzaka (No Mailing Label)

March 7, 1955 Joseph Cameron Alston - Badminton

As a kid, badminton was one of the sports that I was actually good at and I thought it was cool that SI featured a badminton player on one of their covers when they could be covering more popular sports.

Thumbing through this week's SI, I cam upon the obituary of badminton great, Joseph Alston (pg. 16), "the only American to win the men's doubles title -- with Johnny Heah of Malaysia -- in 1957 in the All England Open Badminton Championships". Alston was also an FBI agent residing in the Los Angeles area. From 1967 through 1980, Alston served as the FBI's major case coordinator in Los Angeles. He was the lead Los Angeles agent investigating the 1974 kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst.

Joseph Alston was on the cover of the March 7, 1955 cover of Sports Illustrated. Back in the day when baseball, boxing, and horse racing were king, SI still managed to give some time to the little guy in sports. From sky diving, to bull fighting, badminton, to show dogs, SI has covered all sports, or what was considered sport for the time.

Click onto the LA Times to discover more about Joseph Alston's rich life, or pick up an original copy of the 3/7/55 issue.

April 28, 2008 - Johnny Unitas, "The Best Game Ever"

We always look forward to Thursdays. That's when the new SI comes in. Here's the full scan of the Unitas fold-out issue. At the moment, we only have the subscription issue, but we should be receiving a bunch of newsstand issues shortly. As always, give us a call or email if you have any questions.

The Tuesday Report: Fold-Out Covers

4/28/08 Johnny Unitas

They did it again! It looks like Sports Illustrated is bringing back the fold-out issue. This week's issue features a sweet cover with the late and great Johnny Unitas in the "Best Game Ever: 1958 Colts vs Giants". We won't know what the rest of the cover looks like until we get our copy later in the week.

If you remember, they issued another fold-out earlier in the month of April with the 4/1/2008 Baseball Preview issue (Ryan Braun, Justin Upton, Troy Tulowitzki, Jacoby Ellsworth, Clay Bucholz...see below).



SI's first fold-out cover was published in 1959. It featured the Virginia Tech Hokies vs the VMI Keydets. Altogether, SI published close to twenty fold-out covers; most of them are from the 1960's. The fold-out took a hiatus through the seventies, up until 1982's Gerry Cooney vs Larry Holmes Cover, and then a twenty-one year hiatus until 2003 when the fold-out reappeared with Carmelo Anthony & Jack McKeon. This is probably the first time that two fold-out covers were published in the same month and I think we'll see more in the future.

If you don't have a copy of the 4/1/08 Baseball Preview Issue, click the photo below to pick one up. It'll be a fun cover to get autographed and we have plenty of newsstand editions in stock. That means no unsightly mailing address on the front of the cover. And as always, if you need any help, feel free to call our office (713-672-2793) or give us an email (sales@headlinesports.net).

Welcome to the Headline Sports Blog

Welcome to Headline Sports, your source for back-issue Sports Illustrated magazines and other sports publications. We have a large selection of SI's housed in the space of an 18,000 sq. ft. warehouse near Downtown Houston ,Texas.


Whatever cover you need, whatever date, chances are, we have it in stock. Order before 4 pm central time, and we can ship it the same day. If you have any questions, call us anytime at 713-672-2793.