You followed the sport through play-by-play radio (if applicable), the newspapers and, yes, you devoured Sport, the one reliable publication that connected everyone from Walla Walla to West Palm Beach to what was happening in the mainstream American sports was going on.
Sport’s time expired in 2000 and the assets were acquired by a Canadian company called Sport Media Collection in 2001. Now bosses Wayne Parrish and Marc Appleman are ready to part with Sport’s vast, unparalleled assets, which span 150,000 physical images. These include 62,000 35mm color transparencies; more than 14,000 additional transparency formats; more than 73,000 negatives and videos; more than 4,000 actual prints; and more than 12,000 items.
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Messrs. Parrish and Appleman hired Blackhawk Technologies LLC as a broker for the sale, and the company in turn approached New England Sports Museum curator Richard Johnson as, well, one would say, the seller. “I’m just helping the owner find a suitable buyer,” he says.
“Sports archives comprise the DNA of our sports culture,” said Johnson. “The sport was the home of American meat and potato sports, including the Olympics.”
Johnson fervently wishes there could be a buyer who would want the entire collection, but he’s wise enough to know that it may need to be liquidated.
Full Disclosure: Neither Richard Johnson nor Bob Ryan are neutral observers of this saga. Johnson owns every issue of Sport ever published. I can only claim 136 issues, ranging from 1954 to the 1990s. I once re-read every story in every 1959 issue to write a story about sport in those very pages and was honored to edit an anthology called The Best of Sport in 2003 and what a hard work that was! I mean, I had so many great things to browse through.
That’s because, from the start, Sport has featured the work of top-class authors. The opening edition featured contributions from HG Salsinger, Tom Meany, Jack Sher and – how about a seal of approval? – Grantland rice.
A standard vintage edition would include:
▪ 10 or more feature articles
▪ The sports special on the background of the issue, a detailed profile of a person
▪ Sports Visits to a star’s home
▪ Sports quiz
▪ Sports bookshelf
▪ Cartoons (always excellent)
▪ Sport Talk (notes, gossip and fan club news popular in the 50’s and 60’s)
Columnist Bob Ryan edited the anthology The Best of Sport in 2003.Tanner Pearson for The Boston Globe
“The sports specials,” Johnson says, “fitted the New Yorker profiles.”
There were also plenty of me articles.
“An idea that was way ahead of its time,” says Appleman. “It was the players’ gallery in front of the players’ gallery.”
I should also mention that sport has always had a strong social conscience. Sport was an instant champion of the black athlete.
But the big prize for any investor could be the photos, particularly the treasure left by Ozzie Sweet, who Johnson says is “on par with Ansel Adams or Edward Weston.”
At best, Richard Johnson would buy the archives himself. You couldn’t be in better hands. If only there were a few more zeros left in his account…
“As a curator, I could produce exhibitions myself for ten years,” he regrets.
I can see the hand in the back of the room. “What about Sports Illustrated?” Is that what you’re saying?
SI was concocted by Time magazine editor Henry Luce in 1954, but he wasn’t sure what it was supposed to be.
“I think it was an attempt to be the sports version of Holiday magazine,” says Johnson.
And it’s no secret that it took a good ten years for a clever editor named André Laguerre to find SI a winning formula.
This problem never existed in sport. The sport went to the heart of the true American sports fan from day one. It is an important legacy and finding a buyer with the right intentions is imperative.
“The key is to take what was and try to make it relevant now,” explains Appleman.
“Someone who sees the importance of assets,” Johnson insists.
After all that talk, I’ll probably pull out one of these 136 to read before bed.
Bob Ryan can be reached at [email protected].
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