It is so sad what has happened to Sports Illustrated over the past decade. SI was required reading for people my age who were into sports for most of our young lives. When I was a kid, Thursdays were the best day of the year because that’s when the new issue of SI would usually land in the mailbox. The magazine was full of great game stories, features on the most interesting athletes in the world, and usually one long-form piece that you would want to read again as soon as you finished it.
The slow death of print media that began in the late ‘00s was devastating to SI. They lost great writers to other platforms. The copies got thinner every few months. They tried to do the internet thing, without much success. They did the proverbial “Pivot to Video” and that didn’t work. I gave up and dropped my subscription sometime in the early ‘10s.
Recently they were bought out by a notorious firm that is known for ripping up old media entities to squeeze as many dollars out of their husks as possible before they cast them aside. My last friend who I know still had a subscription just let his run out.
I came across this article last weekend. It’s good to see SI can still do some cool stuff.
How the Internet Created a Sports-Card Boom—and Why the Pandemic Is Fueling It
I do not get the concept of “breaking” in the baseball card world. But I think it is cool that it is getting people interested in cards again. I have a big plastic tote filled with my old cards in our basement. Maybe Breaking will make them worth something again.