Wednesday, January 10, 2007
At some point about fifteen years ago I subscribed to Sports Illustrated. With the exception of a tragic few months during which most of my mail was trapped shuffling between coasts, I haven’t missed an issue. Generally I ignore all the commemorative editions and t-shirt and sweatshirt offers; I have enough t-shirts and sweatshirts to clothe most of the Sudan, and Lord knows I have far, far too many back issues that I refuse to trash. But when I saw this morning the inevitable Gators Championship Package I knew I was going to have to make a phone call.
My annual subscription automatically renewed at the end of December and the Championship DVD, hard-bound edition, and t-shirt is only available to new subscribers, so I was ready for a fight. To my surprise the helpful customer service rep at SI graciously helped me credit my existing subscription towards a “new” one so I could get the deal. I am going to go out on a limb and credit that to the fact that the call center I reached is located in Ocala, Florida.
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Tuesday, March 29, 2005
I step into the batter’s box, placing my right foot in the hole … scraped inside the back chalk line. I am aware of nothing but [the pitcher] — not the crowd, not the infield in and Lord knows not the blue sky.
This moment is the essence of the game, its molecular core. It is why we love baseball as we love a family member, while the other sports have to manage with our lust, infatuation or uncommitted affection. Either I will win or [the pitcher] will win, and even the most rudimentary fan will immediately know it. No one will have to wait for the game films. And no teammate can help me.
A baseball game will stage about 80 of these batter versus pitcher matchups, all of which appeal to our American sense of democracy — we must take turns at bat — and our thirst for conflict and for quick and clear resolution, the backbone of prime-time television, our real national pastime, as well. Eighty miniversions of CSI.
Sports Illustrated writer Tom Verducci spent five days as a Toronto Blue Jay during spring training this year. His account of the experience appears in the March 14, 2005 issue of SI.
Monday, April 29, 2002
<rant>
I could write a book about all the things done horribly, terribly poorly at CNNSI.com. Try to manage your magazine subscription there. Try to edit any of the thirty-eight separate mailing lists to which you can unwittingly find yourself subscribed. Try to find an article! The pages on the site load slightly slower than tectonic plates collide. There are dozens of useless and usability-impinging graphics on every single page. (I can’t even imagine what it would be like to read on a sub-4 browser.) The search functions are next-to-useless. And - can I stress this enough? - the archives are craptacular. You can’t link to an article more than an issue or two in the past, and all that’s archived beyond that are the “teasers” (which is only a bit more annoying than it is pointless).
</rant>
