The SuperStar Project - No. 6

"You're putting WHO on the cover?"

Beginning in the spring of 1978, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED engaged in an interesting experiment. This experiment lasted for approximately one year and three issues, after which the experiment—attracting newsstand customers with cover subjects the average baseball fan wouldn’t have recognized in fifty guesses—would, as near as I can tell, never be repeated.

In 1978, S.I. arrived at our house every week (seems like it was always in the Friday mail, although I might be imagining that detail). During spring training that year, there was a magical moment when the new issue arrived and … the cover depicted a smiling young fella wearing a Royals uniform! It was Clint Hurdle, and according to the most important magazine in America he was THIS YEAR’S PHENOM.

The Royals had won 102 games in ‘77, easily their best season, before losing (again) to the Yankees in a heartbreaking ALCS. But with THIS YEAR’S PHENOM in the lineup every day, they’d be even better in ‘78, right?

Hey. I was 11 years old. Cut little Robbie some slack.

Hurdle would not be that year’s phenom, and the Royals would not be better. He was pretty good, though, especially for a 20-year-old, and the Royals did win their third straight A.L. West title (and yes, they lost to the Damn Yankees again).

Anyway, when that S.I. cover was published, I had heard of Clint Hurdle—he’d debuted with the Royals in the middle of the previous September, and homered twice in nine games—but I doubt if many others around the country noticed, as the divisional race had been long decided and Hurdle wasn’t on the postseason roster. When most subscribers received that issue, they looked at a stranger. Sure, a handsome, strapping young stranger. But still a stranger. And now I wonder how many casual newsstand perusers in Peoria were moved to fork over their hard-earned ONE DOLLAR to read about this kid.

The next fall, the October 23 cover featured a little-used, light-hitting Yankee second baseman named Brian Doyle, who had entered the postseason with a career .192 batting average: 10 hits (all singles) in 52 at-bats. Zero walks. Zero steals. But there he was in the ‘78 World Series, pressed into duty against right-handed pitchers because Willie Randolph got injured right at the end of the regular season.

Doyle started Games 2 and 3 against the Dodgers, going 1 for 7. He also entered Games 1 and 4 as a late-inning defensive sub. Ho. Hum.

But then came Games 5 and 6, both of which the Yankees won to clinch their second straight championship, and in which Doyle went 3 for 5 and 3 for 4. He scored four runs, and drove home two. Neither game was close, but the media had their Cinderella, and that is how Brian Doyle wound up on the cover of The Rolling Stone Sports Illustrated, throwing to first base while jumping over the sliding Lee Lacy (whose face we can’t see).

S.I.’s next baseball cover didn’t appear until spring training, when a slight fellow named Harry Chappas appeared on the March 19 cover with the headline, THE LITTLEST ROOKIE. Chappas was (and is) officially listed as standing 5’7”, but within that issue, White Sox owner Bill Veeck said, “Harry is the smallest player in the major leagues since Eddie Gaedel. He is 5’3”.”

This seems to have been one of Veeck’s Barnum-isms, as 5’3” would make Chappas an inch shorter than Kansas City’s Fred Patek, then somewhat famous (at least where I lived) for being MLB’s smallest player. Chappas was probably 5’5” (or close). Regardless, after a solid September ‘78, Chappas entered spring training in the running for the White Sox’s Opening Day shortstop job, and looked great on that magazine cover.

Which he did win! Only to be demoted in April after (reportedly) missing a sign and also (definitely) collecting only one hit in his five starts. Chappas did rejoin the Sox in August and finished with a .381 batting average in 18 post-recall games.

He was still only 21 and seemed to have a bright future in the game.

Then in 1980 he stopped hitting: .160 in 26 games with the White Sox, .206 the rest of the season in Triple-A. A few short years later, he was out of pro ball at 26.

I’ve spoken to Clint Hurdle a couple of times about “his” cover, most recently on a SABRCast episode. Back in 2015, he told an S.I. reporter that he received a dozen copies of the magazine to sign, and I suspect the same is roughly true for Chappas and Doyle. Of course, the difference for Hurdle is that he later became known for many years as a pretty successful manager in Colorado and Pittsburgh. Before that, he’d actually started building a résumé as a solid major league player, most especially playing a key role with the pennant-winning Royals in 1980, following a disappointing ‘79 campaign that included half the season back in the minors.

I might have missed someone. But I think Hurdle was the first obscure player on the cover of Sports Illustrated—remember, this was long before anyone paid any attention at all to prospects, unless they were No. 1 draft picks or super-hyped pitchers—and I think Harry Chappas was the last. With Brian Doyle between them, all within a single calendar year.

Professionals, that is. As our sporting culture came to hype younger and younger athletes, many of them still technically amateurs, S.I. leaned into (or led) the trend with covers depicting high-school slugger Bryce Harper (2009), Little League pitcher Mo’ne Davis (2014), and high-school pitcher Hunter Greene (2017).¹

But before them, way back in 1989 there was Jon Peters, whose image is one of the more beautiful and dramatic that the magazine ever published (although of course the cover itself is infected by the mission creep that’s been a hallmark of S.I. covers for decades now).

Peters’ baseball story did not end well, in fact was already heading down an unfortunate path despite his record-breaking record. But Rick Reilly was in Texas to write an old-fashioned homespun success story, and that’s what we got.²

A few other candidates for “obscure” baseball cover boys:

• Sonny Jackson (with Joe Morgan) in 1966

• Ron Swoboda in 1968³

• Michael Jordan (heh) in 1993

• Jeff Francoeur, hailed as THE NATURAL in 2005⁴

• Kosuke Fukudome in 2008

Purely in terms of career wins and losses, and not knowing anything about anything, someone might think Mark Fidrych was obscure when he showed up in our mailboxes with Big Bird. But as you know, Fidrych was tremendously far from obscure.

And then of course there’s Sidd Finch. If only he’d been on the cover…

1. Seven years later, the supremely talented Greene has won 11 games in the major leagues, which I suppose says something about the difficulty of his chosen profession.

2. Thirty years later, S.I.’s Tim Layden wrote an excellent follow-up story, in which we learn just how unhappy Peters had been during Reilly’s visit.

3. Sometimes I think the S.I. editors just had a great image and made up an excuse for using it. Swoboda wasn’t particularly good in ‘68 and neither were the Mets—they would finish ninth that season—but the header on that May 6 cover was THE MOVIN’ METS, even though they’d gone 7-9 in April.

4. Frenchy was one of the players who inspired me to explore the history of young baseball players getting “The Natural” label; as you probably know, these players have usually not become stars, at least not for long.