SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, Vol. I, No. 1

Out to 350,000 charter subscribers and to newsstands all over the U.S. this week go half a million copies of TIME Inc.'s new weekly magazine: SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, "a weekly recital in words and pictures of ... the Wonderful World of Sport." Printed in Chicago and Los Angeles and published every Thursday, the new 25-c- magazine ($7.50 a year) has a full-color picture of a night baseball game in Milwaukee's County Stadium on the cover of its first issue. Inside are articles on everything from "The Battle of the Bubble Gum" ("The weapons are baseball players, the prize, millions of young Americans") to "The New Golden Age of Sport," a survey by the editors, who found that in sports "the Fabulous '503 are likely to replace the Golden '203."

Under Managing Editor Sidney L. James, former assistant managing editor of LIFE, 50 editorial staffers put together a book packed with color pictures, features and spot sports news. This week's lead story: an account of the British Empire Games in Vancouver, B.C. (see SPORT). SPORTS ILLUSTRATED'S regular departments include "Pat on the Back" ("Praise for those not already smothered with it"), "You Should Know" ("If you are going to buy a puppy"), "Yesterday" ("When a pretty filly, Goldsmith Maid, was the belle of the sporting world"), "Under 21" ("Some wonderful things can be done with a boomerang"). Among the new magazine's regular contributors: Tennis Player Bill Talbert, Sport Writer Red Smith, Football Grandee Herman Hickman, Nature Humorist John ("Tex") O'Reilly, Novelist and Boxing Impresario Budd Schulberg.

Even before the name of the magazine was announced last month, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED received 250,000 subscription orders, completely sold out the advertising space in its first 144-page issue. It now has orders from more than 200 companies for $1.3 million worth of ads. Says Publisher H.H.S. Phillips Jr., former advertising director of TIME: "When we were working out the idea of a weekly sports magazine, there was a good deal of doubt felt in all quarters. There's not much doubt left now. We're off to one of the fastest starts in the history of publishing."

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