Hanging up the Spikes   

Sport magazine ceased publishing this month after 54 years, fatally wounded by dwindling revenues and a market that's shifted to niches.

THE STORY COULD HAVE been written yesterday, except for one detail.
It concerns an athlete, one of the best in the world, whose view is shaped by the racism he has experienced. The story explores raging contract disputes, mistrust of strangers, clashes with the media.
The writer takes a road trip with this athlete to try to understand this "dark, brooding figure silhouetted against a rococo backdrop of fame, fortune and talent." The writing is taut, the mood one of unrelenting melancholy.
The story, "The Lone Wolf of Tennis," was written about former tennis champion Pancho Gonzales by Dick Schaap. It appeared in 1958 in Sport, a magazine that ceased publication in August after 54 years. While its profile had waned considerably, the magazine, in its early decades, was an influential part of American pastimes--fueled by great sportswriters, such as Schaap; the legendary Red Smith, who won a Pulitzer Prize as a columnist for the New York Times; and Roger Kahn, whose book, "Boys of Summer," is a sports classic.
Schaap wrote for the magazine for years before serving as its fifth editor from 1972 to '77. But there was a difference in '58, the detail so crucial to the Pancho Gonzales piece--the access writers had to athletes. As suspicious as Gonzales was, he allowed Schaap to ride along with him as he barnstormed across the country on a tennis tour.
When Schaap arrived in Green Bay shortly after the Packers had won their first World Championship in 1961 (the Super Bowl wasn't invented until six years later), he found star players thrilled to have a big-time writer come to their little backwater.
Not only did Schaap write four books with Packer guard Jerry Kramer, the two became lifelong friends.
"It was much different then," Schaap says. "You could have a pretty good rapport with most of the people you wrote about. The confrontation you have today, for the most part, wasn't there."
When news that Sport was going out of business reached Steve Gelman, managing editor from 1958 to '66, he said he was surprised to learn the magazine was still in business at all. Gelman, special projects editor for George, had last picked up an issue in 1996, when Sport celebrated its 50th anniversary.
"It made me a little sad, but I wasn't at all surprised," Gelman says. "As far as I was concerned, it had lost all relevance a very, very long time ago."
Sport had become an anachronism, a monthly general circulation sports magazine without the resources to compete with Sports Illustrated and ESPN The Magazine, and in a market shifting to sports niches. Symbolic of its failure to keep up was its decision not to develop a Web site.
The final blow was a loss of about $500,000 a year in advertising revenue from Philip Morris. The cigarette maker, under attack for targeting teenage smokers, announced at the beginning of this year it would no longer advertise in magazines with at least 15 percent of their readers under age 18.
Although officials at parent Emap Petersen Publishing in Los Angeles would not confirm the figures, Sport was reportedly losing as much as $2 million a year before the Philip Morris decision. Blanche Frankel, a spokeswoman for Emap, would say Sport had earned about $500,000 a year from Philip Morris ads.
Emap dismissed the magazine's advertising staff in February and six editorial staffers in July. Editor in Chief John Roach and three others have been retained by Emap to develop two new sports publications, Roach says.
The editor was promoted from the executive editor slot in February to determine whether or not Sport should be kept alive. Emap's decision against continuing was so sudden that there is no mention in the August issue that it would be the last for Sport. The magazine had a circulation of 750,000 in 1997, and that figure has been sliding since.
Roach still believes Sport could have been saved, but he may be alone in the world of magazine publishing.
"It didn't look a little lost, it was lost for a long time," Gelman says. "It exists for me as nostalgia, for a time when I truly believe Sport helped shape some of the thinking about sports among our young readers."
More than 40 years later, Gelman recalls the Schaap piece on Gonzales as among the finest sports writing ever in the magazine. Indeed, David Halberstam included it in the 1999 book he edited, "The Best American Sports Writing of the Century."
"Early on, the magazine went for a level of sophistication in its writing," Halberstam says. "In the post-war years you had this growing interest in sports and a more affluent audience. You had more educated writers writing for a more educated audience."
From its debut in 1946, with Joe DiMaggio and his son, Joe Jr., on the cover, Sport presented intimate portraits of athletes who lived in the minds of fans primarily through box scores and radio broadcasts.
Besides Smith and Kahn, the magazine was a place for writers like Jimmy Breslin, Pete Hamill, Gay Talese and Alex Haley, who happened to choose sports as subjects.
"We had the best writers you could get, and we broke a lot of stories," says Gelman. "We really gave you the sociology, not only of sports, but of life in this country."
The best days for Sport were relatively brief. The weekly Sports Illustrated entered the market in 1954, backed by the powerful Henry Luce Time-Life chain. And circulation was slipping before Schaap took over as editor.
"Those early years were very heady times to be at Sport magazine," Gelman says. "It was more fun back then. It had a family feel back then. But early on it became clear we were fighting a losing battle."