The continuing adventures of InDesign's spellcheck

A few weeks ago at work, we had an updated version of InDesign installed on our computers. I briefly worried that the most fascinating aspect of our InDesign - the crazed, angry, prophetic, cruel, sympathetic, sophomoric, harsh, unforgiving, all-knowing spellcheck - would have been altered in the new version. Would it still offer up Satan as a correction for Ashton? Would psychobiology still be a suggested change for Scooby-Doo? Or would InDesign go legit and normalize, blending in with all the other boring spellchecks in the world?

No worries. Some more examples of InDesign spellcheck's peculiar outlook on the world:

Salma (as in Hayek): Slimy, salami
Katy (as in Perry): Kooky, kitty
Volkswagen: Folksinger - Surely many unkempt hippie folksingers drove Volkswagens back in the day. But how does InDesign know this?

Lorenzo (as in Lamas): Low-rent, reruns - A bit harsh. Then again, if I turned on Lifetime at 3 in the morning some time and discovered an old episode of Falcon Crest, those would probably be two of the first words out of my mouth.

Mischa: Mescal, miscue
Ziering: Swearing, syringe
Cibrian: Aspiring, Siberian
Danielle: Dunghill, dingle
Beyonce: Bouncy, bones - When the singing superstar invariably becomes scary-skinny at some point in her career, those two words will appear in a review of her concerts.

Lautner: Latent, Latino - I think this was one of the primary concerns of the controversial Arizona immigration law from a few months ago. Undocumented workers, anchor babies, illegal aliens, latent Latinos.

Disick: Disco, dashiki.
Fallon: Fallen, felon - Only if the late-night gig really goes bad.

Speaking of the late-night television wars, InDesign suggests horny, auburn, uterine, ovarian, and ob-gyn for O'Brien. InDesign is not shy when it comes to mattes of the human anatomy.

Baskett: Back-seat, basked, bisect - Not sure why InDesign hyphenates backseat, but it is the perfect way to describe Hank Baskett's spot in his marriage to former Playboy playmate and current disgruntled Minnesota resident Kendra Wilkinson.

InDesign expert David Blatner noted that he couldn't get his settings to duplicate our results. I'm a bit disappointed in that, since everyone should get to enjoy InDesign spellcheck's perversions and sly sense of humor. But I also like that we possess an apparently unique spellcheck, one that has seemingly gone rogue and no longer cares what writers and editors think. It will continue offering nonsensical suggestions for common words and proper nouns. Yes, our computers got an upgrade but InDesign spellcheck stayed the same.

Thank God.

Hunting for more treasures in the Sports Illustrated vault

Sports Illustrated's online vault remains one of my favorite spots on the Internet. The site remains free, though there are always rumors that someday Time-Warner may start charging for access to the incredible archives inside the vault. I'd pay. Then again, I still actually buy newspapers and I know that's a dwindling minority, so who knows if other people would fork over money for access to SI's treasured past.

This cover above has John and Evelyn Olin, or, as they're called, "Mr. And Mrs. John Olin." It's from November 17, 1958. This issue came four years after Sports Illustrated premiered. It still focused on things like sailing, hunting and bridge. College football reigned, not the NFL. Baseball was certainly a popular subject, but no more so than the America's Cup.

Some of the stories in this issue:

A Man, a Dog and a Crusade

Smile of Champions Recap of class-boat titles

Fair Game for Monsieur Louis "The chef at 21 can prepare anything from baby pheasants to black bear chops"

When Ely Deserted Culbertson Riveting story about contact bridge.

And it's fair to say Sports Illustrated originally targeted an elite readership. Today the Faces in the Crowd features high school phenoms, small-college standouts and the occasional middle-aged guy who won five straight league bowling titles in Alabama. In this issue?

"Pierre du Pont III, Wilmington, Del. corporation executive, sailed his schooner Barlovento over rainswept 100-mile Chesapeake Bay course, won Skipper Regatta in corrected 17:25:05.

Yes, he's one of the Du Ponts. A normal guy. Just your average face in the crowd.

There was another story in the issue, a completely non-sexist feature called "The Question: Should a husband try to teach his wife to ski?" There's an answer from Gary Cooper (who says yes), and from Mrs. Nelson A. Rockefeller, who wrote, "I think it's fine for a husband to teach his wife to ski, providing, of course, that he himself is a good skier and a good teacher." Rockefellers on skiing, Du Ponts on sailing. All that's missing is a blurb about a Mellon heir dominating croquet.

SI always loved dogs, as evidenced by this odd cover. Or this one. And then there's the February 8, 1960 cover: Are Dog Shows Ruining Dogs? I say yes.

In its early years, Sports Illustrated often relied on drawings for its covers, like this Masters one. The week after that issue, the "6th Annual Baseball" issue also featured a sketch, not a photo. In the May 16, 1960 issue, SI boldly labeled Australia the "leading sports nation," and as proof featured a cover of half-naked men and over-dressed girls playing tennis.

The old Sports Illustrated just loved bridge. Noted bridge expert Charles Goren appeared on the cover twice and had a cover byline a third time. Goren's byline appeared on the February 17, 1964 issue, the last time bridge graced the SI cover.

By the 1970s, SI had drifted toward the major sports, though the magazine still saved countless pages for national track and field events and regional swimming competitions, the type of stories that basically only appear every four years today.

Fran Tarkenton was the first Viking to make it on the cover, in 1962. Sports Illustrated's famous NFL writer Tex Maule wrote the cover story on the young quarterback, who would be traded by the team five years later before returning to Minnesota in the 1970s for the team's glory years. Maule's story ran with the headline "His Sundays are Murder: Fran Tarkenton, quarterback of the Minnesota Vikings, has to scramble to save his young life." The second Viking player to make the cover? Ron Vander Kelen. A year after publishing the story on Tarkenton, SI wrote a lengthy feature on the rookie quarterback Vander Kelen, who came to the Vikings after playing college ball at Wisconsin and winning the Big Ten MVP in 1962. The story ran in August, as the rookie adjusted to the pros. Vander Kelen did not exactly match his college success; he threw six touchdown passes in his career. He's probably best known for being a trivia question answer: who started at quarterback in Bud Grant's first game as Vikings coach?

Incidentally, Bud Grant never made it on the cover of SI. In other words, Charles Goren made it two more times than one of the most successful coaches in NFL history. Then again, Charles Goren never lost four Super Bowls.

So many great strange covers from the magazine's early decades. Bud Ogden played two years in the NBA. He scored a total of 257 points. Yet in 1969, Ogden, then a star at Santa Clara, made the cover of the most famous sports magazine in the land, in this artsy, odd cover shot that was apparently conceived by a photographer who was enjoying some of that decade's finest pharmaceutical products:


In the current SI, there's a story on Atlanta manager Bobby Cox. But in 1957, a different Bobby Cox became the first Minnesota sports figure to make the Sports Illustrated cover. The magazine declared Gophers quarterback Bobby Cox the best quarterback in America. As far as I can tell, Cox is the only Gopher football player to ever make the cover. And, based on the last fifty years of Gophers football, it's more likely SI will put a bridge player on the cover before a Gopher.

But at least the program doesn't have to worry about being jinxed.

The madness - and genius - of InDesign spellcheck

Publishing people always debate the merits of the page-design programs Quark and InDesign. It's the layout equivalent of Mays vs. Mantle or Magic vs. Bird, except about 98 percent dorkier. Different magazines and newspapers use different systems and editors and artists often have to adapt and learn both, as a publication might switch systems. I don't have the technical knowledge to really debate the strengths and weaknesses of either. I know how to use the basics of both but certainly don't know enough to be called an expert.

But I do know that InDesign has the best spellcheck system in publishing. Now, using spellcheck isn't the most exciting thing for many people, and rightfully so. It's a vital tool, but not one that usually brings joy, confusion and wonder. It's there to correct typos, not entertain. InDesign is the exception.

Shortly after we started using InDesign, everyone noticed bizarre suggestions popping up on spellcheck. Often the suggestions shared but a single letter with the offending word, as if InDesign simply threw out random words that had no connection to the highlighted choice. Other times InDesign seemed to have psychological insight into the highlighted word. InDesign could be petty, occasionally cruel. A few years ago I put together a list of some of our greatest hits from InDesign. That list has been lost, but I've been accumulating new ones. Here, some favorites.

Ashton (as in Kutcher): Satan - that's a bit harsh, though I briefly considered the possibility the first time I saw the adorable fetus strangle himself at the conclusion of the director's cut of Ashton's Butterfly Effect.

Snooki: Snake, snaky, sneaky - Have never watched an episode of Jersey Shore. But like 93 percent of Americans, I've absorbed the show through osmosis and feel comfortable that InDesign knows what it's talking about with these choices.

Armstrong: Harum-scarum - One of my favorite suggestions. Think of someone editing a story about the seven-time Tour de France champion. Spellcheck flags Armstrong. Great, thinks the writer. Maybe I used two g's or typed an extra m. Instead, InDesign asks if you didn't really mean to spell harum-scarum, which, for the record, means "acting in a reckless or rash way."

Pacino: Pacing, passion, pausing, posing, policing - InDesign nicely sums up Al Pacino's career in five words.

Rihanna: urinal - InDesign possesses a juvenile sense of humor.

Octomom - Ottoman, economy, actinium, outman, etymon

Suleman (Octomom's last name) - Yes-man, Somalian, seaming, sliming, semen

Showtime: Sheikhdom - One of InDesign's more confusing entries. How would anyone possibly spell sheikhdom as showtime? At Adobe, which engineer in charge of InDesign put that in as one of the suggestions for showtime? Okay, they share the first two letters. But the o and e are separated by five keys. The h and w are on different lines and different parts of each line. Just realize that if you ever see a paper talk about Magic Johnson's Sheikhdom Lakers, they most certainly use InDesign and not Quark.

Scooby-Doo: Psychobiology - ?

Wahlberg: liberal, whalebone

Stepkids: seedpods, setbacks, stupidities - The person in charge of InDesign's spellcheck must have had a difficult experience with the new wife's kids as he's obviously not a fan of children that didn't come from his seed.

Stepdad: styptic, skeptic, stupid, estopped, stoppled - InDesign teaches me new things every day. I like to think I have a decent vocabulary, but InDesign has words at its disposal that haven't been used since they were created hundreds of years ago. Ever hear a plumber use the word stopple? And, again, how does InDesign not recognize stepdad, but is perfectly fine with estopped, which is called "archaic" by the dictionary, a Middle English word, meaning it probably came before 1500.. InDesign...so confounding, yet learned.

Aniston: Einstein, nesting, moisten, ingesting, amnestying, nauseating - Einstein, nauseating...okay. But moisten? A girl I used to work with hated the word moist. Moist and probe, two words she refused to ever use when writing headlines.

Beatles: Ablates, oblates, boletus - The most famous group in music history. Perhaps the most influential group in music history. But not to InDesign. InDesign believes Beatles isn't a real word, that you need something that people are actually familiar with. Like ablates (to remove or destroy, especially by cutting), oblates (flattened or depressed at the poles), and boletus (any of a genus of boletes - as a porcini - some of which are poisonous and others edible). John Lennon said the Beatles were bigger than Jesus. But to InDesign they're not even bigger than a mushroom.

Jovi: Devil, Jehovah - InDesign can't decide if it likes the group or hates it.

Gingrich: Gonorrhea - No comment.

B-Cup: Built-up

Tac-toe: Oatcake - Huh?

Google: Gigolo

December: Dismember - A fairly memorable month. Most people are familiar with it. InDesign, though, tends to have more violent thoughts. It asks: In that Christmas story where you mention December 25, are you sure you didn't mean to spell dismember?

Hamptons: Moppets, impaction, impotent

Baldwin: Bulgarian
Beckham: Belching

Minibar: Namibian
Celine: Senile

Former Playboy Playmate Kendra Wilkinson (that's her full name, sort of like Rookie Phenom Stephen Strasburg or Radical Cleric Moktada al-Sadr) has been in the news recently for a leaked sex tape. InDesign was ahead of the game. It's suggestion for Kendra? Kinkier. And for Wilkinson: Leakiness, wildness.

Hunky: Andy, hunt, unyoke - Who's Andy? And what's the relation to hunky? Seems obvious that whoever inserted suggestions for "hunky" was busy daydreaming about a strapping youngster named Andrew, perhaps the guy in the adjoining cubicle. The worker couldn't express this love - workplace rules frown on such things - so he/she put a sly joke into the system, so that now, whenever someone using InDesign uses the word hunky in a sentence, they'll be asked if they want to change it to Andy, since Andrew - that handsome co-worker - is just so hot.

Drescher: Deerstalker
Boybander: Bobsledder
Beckinsale: Pekingese
Pitt: Pate, Pete, pita

Gosselin: Tussling, outselling, gassing, goosing
Whisperer: Horsewhipper - Exactly what it sounds like, to flog a horse with a whip. A bit disappointed InDesign didn't offer up Horse Whisperer as an alternate.

Bambi: Bimbo - InDesign has little respect for the classics, or it's been programmed to think of Bambi as a stripper instead of a cartoon. But the suggestion isn't that strange once you've seen that InDesign doesn't even recognize Disney. Suggestions for the most famous animation company in the world? Addison, dowsing.

Baywatch's: Brachiate's, brachial's - InDesign apparently didn't watch TV in the early 1990s. Or, maybe it did and simply didn't like the cast, as its suggestion for actress Yasmine Bleeth is "asinine."

I sometimes look at InDesign's spellcheck as being a living organism, capable of causing great harm, like the computer system that starts the war in Terminator. Or it's a cousin to HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. A year ago, the Brigham Young University student newspaper, The Daily Universe, recalled 18,500 copies of the paper after InDesign's spellcheck caused chaos on the campus.

Some poor copy editor ran spellcheck on a photo caption and clicked a change for the word apostle, making it apostate. So instead of talking about the "members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles," it referred to the Twelve Apostates. But that's the evil genius of InDesign spellcheck. By putting apostate as a suggestion, there was a chance - a small chance - that some poor editor would accidentally click on it, changing apostle to apostate. InDesign spellcheck simply waited for the right moment to strike. And what better place to do it than at one of the most religious campuses in the country? Maybe the mistake gets laughed off at a secular school. At Brigham Young it caused a crisis.

One student, a media arts major named Hillary Miller, said, "I hope someone isn't just fooling around. It would be sad if someone was trying to do harm to our church."

No one was trying to harm the church. It was just the InDesign spellcheck, the most playful, arrogant, wise, confounding and mischievous spellcheck in the land.

Walking into the SI vault

I never need an excuse to look through old issues of Sports Illustrated. My dad has every issue dating back to the early 1970s. Before anyone accuses him of being a hoarder and organizes an intervention or calls a reality TV producer, it should be noted that even if he did ever want to get rid of them, I've made it clear since about, oh, 1984, that he is not allowed to throw them away. I still regret that in 1986 I removed the covers off of dozens of magazines and used them as bedroom wallpaper. As comforting as it was to sit underneath the cover that ran after the Lakers won the 1985 NBA title, I now regret that all of those magazines look like they were vandalized. All of the magazines - the ones with covers and without - sit in their little cardboard magazine holders, waiting for me to page through them once or twice a year. One day we'll move them east, whenever they officially become my magazines.

About two years ago, SI put its entire collection online. It's surely one of the great inventions of the Internet era, although it might give people the idea that it's okay to throw away the actual old issues of the magazine. And that is still not okay.

But it has made it easier to walk through the past. For the last week I've been reading old issues for a baseball project. One of the stories was "written" by longtime Yankees general manager George Weiss, after he left the team following the 1960 season. He recaps his career with the team. He also talks about the future of the game and potential trouble spots for the sport. He laments that "there just aren't the number of 154-game players around that there used to be."

That sounds like the long-heard cries from people who say the game wasn't what it used to be, complaints that have been heard pretty much every decade since 1900. What makes Weiss's comment a bit odder is that he had a reputation for being a racist, an executive who was extremely reluctant to sign black ballplayers. The point being, in 1960 there were hundreds more "154-game players" available than there were in 1945. But you had to look past skin color to find them.

But Weiss had another reason for this supposed talent shortage, and it's one of those lines that drives home just how different the sport was 50 years ago. Weiss wrote, "For one thing, baseball gets a lot of competition from industry for a young man's abilities, and when a kid is offered a business job at a good starting salary, he thinks twice about gambling on taking three or four years to develop himself for a major league baseball career that is apt to be over at 35 anyway. All of this makes it harder for a ball club to line up good young players."

Competition from "industry." All those young ballplayers turning their backs on the Yankees to pursue a life in the coal mine, or a career with an accounting firm. Better salary, more stability, kick-ass benefits. Modern GMs don't realize how lucky they have it, not having to worry about killer competition from the business world.

I could look through old SI's all day, and I have on many occasions. One of the most enjoyable things is seeing how the magazine itself changed, nearly as dramatically as the salary demands of players. Today, and for the last two or three decades, the magazine focuses on the major sports. But in its early years, it had a broad definition of "sports," and actually focused on leisure (maybe old issues of SI influenced the creators of Trivial Pursuit; what else would explain all of those maddening questions on backgammon and cribbage under the sports and leisure category?). The old covers were barren. A single picture often ran with just a handful of words providing decoration. For instance, this cover from March 20, 1961. More leisure? The May 13, 1963 cover. A drawing. A girl, a bikini, a boat, and...dolphins?

But they've always focused on baseball.

Here's the cover for the 1961 baseball preview issue. It's a cool little picture and not quite as dull as many of the covers from that era. A look inside the issue reveals how the magazine's changed. There's a story on the Florida Derby. There's a story on the International Automobile Show in New York. There's a swimming story. And for god's sake, there's a story on bridge. It's actually a delightfully eclectic group of stories, although it's also perfectly understandable why the magazine's focus has shifted in the past decades. In a mainstream magazine in 2010, there might not be room for this type of writing:

"I suppose the reason why so many lawyers are good bridge players is that logic is the basis of their practice and, also, they are in close contact with people and are good judges of what behavior to expect."

Damn lawyers, and their bridge skills.

Finally in that issue there are the team previews, thorough accounts of each squad's strengths and weaknesses, info on management and the stadiums. Minnesota welcomed the Twins, freshly arrived after a move from Washington.

"Minnesota farmers and businessmen await the first home run of Minnesota's Harmon Killebrew. Minnesota housewives and schoolboys are ready to ooh when Minnesota's Jim Lemon strikes out and aah when he hits one over the wall." There was more oohing than aahing that year, unfortunately, as the state's lonely housewives and rambunctious schoolboys saw Lemon hit a mere 14 homers, a year after he awed the Washington fans with 38.

Every baseball preview since the magazine's inception is online, in the vault. And if you're dying to see a hard copy version of those stories, call my folks. Just don't be angry if the issue you're looking for is missing its cover.

Hodgepodge

New York is supposed to get hit by something called a snow hurricane, which sounds less like a weather pattern and more like something a maniacal Nicolas Cage confronts in a movie about the end of the world. Before moving to New York, I checked the weather report several times a day. You have to when you drive. Now, I hear about snowstorms a few hours before they hit, as if I'm living back in Walnut Grove with the Ingalls clan without access to modern meteorology. No matter what happens, the subways will run, though they might be delayed. No worries about shoveling snow or scraping ice. No worries about horrible roads and worse drivers. It's a benefit of living in the big city.

* Then there's the downside to life in New York. Since our return from Cape Town, we wake up every weekday at 8 a.m. to the sound of a gigantic jackhammer pummeling rock in a parking lot right next to our building. The project apparently began when we were in South Africa. And will continue for...well, no one really knows. Could be a month, maybe two. A year? No one knows. A giant wooden barrier stands in front of the construction site, making it impossible to peer inside. The hammering begins at 8 and ends at 4, with only a lunch hour in between providing silence. People who work from home have likely seen their productivity drop 75 percent and homicidal fantasies rise 10 percent. I escape it at 9:30, but the effects of this madness hits me much earlier. I now wake up at 7 or 7:30, popping up to stare at the alarm clock. How many more minutes until the drilling starts? Do I have a half hour of sleep left or 5 minutes? Adding to the mystery, no one knows what will be put in the spot, which was a parking lot. Someone said a business. Another person said a 24-hour parking lot, accompanied by those lifts that raise the cars. Should be nice and quiet. Small towns usually don't have these problems. 

* I'm making my return to our Wednesday night basketball after a five-week absence. It's not exactly Jimmy walking into the town meeting to tell the folks of Hickory he thinks it's time for him to start playing ball. But I'm looking forward to it, even if my lungs aren't. 

* This story by Chris Jones on Roger Ebert in Esquire has received a lot of praise the last few weeks, all of it justified. As a sidebar, Ebert's journal is also a must-read. He hasn't spoken in four years, but his writing is as prodigious and enjoyable as ever. And here's an interview with Jones, where he discusses the process of researching and writing the story. Interesting to everyone, but writers will find it especially insightful. 

* Do "youngsters" still listen to announcers when they tell them to pay attention to something that just happened in a game? It seems to happen in basketball more than other sports; apparently, young offensive linemen at home don't need to watch Flozell Adams' technique and instead should concentrate on becoming obese or investing in HGH. Brent Musburger does it all the time, especially when he's teamed on ESPN with Bobby Knight. Growing up, I liked receiving the tips from the broadcasting crew. "Now for you youngsters out there watching from home, remember to never dribble into the corner or you'll get trapped." They're usually simple things, but good tips. Block out. Don't back away from the line when releasing a free throw. To make it more realistic, Knight should scream the instructions to youngsters, perhaps while kicking Musburger in the shins.

* Children of the '80s and others raised on The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Sixteen Candles and many more of his movies will enjoy this Vanity Fair story on the late John Hughes. It talks about why he basically dropped out of Hollywood in the 1990s , never to return. He didn't pull a Howard Hughes. Instead he devoted himself to his family and personal writing - stories, journals and scripts that were never meant to be turned into movies.

Today's Stuck in the Past moment from the Showtime Lakers. The first quarter of Game 1 of the 1987 Finals. According to this SI story, the Lakers ran 35 fastbreaks in the first two quarters and only 10 set plays. The ancient Celtics have no chance of keeping pace. 

The most remarkable thing about those fastbreaks is how many came after the Celtics scored, something that you almost never see today. 

That's a highlight of Magic's career - he won MVP of the series, his third Finals MVP.

Here's one of the lowlights. Or at least one of the more awkward moments. The Lakers retired his number in February 1992, three months after he left the game. It was a moving ceremony that concluded with Magic's speech. At 1:30, he mentions former teammate Norm Nixon and says, "Norm taught me all my bad habits." The crowd reacts with nervous murmurs. Guys like Kareem and Jerry West laugh knowingly. Considering Magic retired, based in part on his, um, bad habit of having unprotected sex with thousands of women, it's a strange time to thank the guy who helped show him how life as an NBA superstar works ("Now Magic, when a groupie approaches you...). The rest of the speech is pretty cool. Bird's there. McHale. Chick Hearn. Jack Nicholson. It would have been an emotional day regardless, but at this time, many people thought Magic would be dead within a few years. Today he's stronger than ever, even if he is carrying a few too many pounds.

Remember when Kip Keino was SI's Sportsman of the Year?

Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year issue came out this week, with Derek Jeter's handsome face gracing the cover. Jeter helped the Yankees to another World Series title and in the process broke Lou Gehrig's mark as the team's all-time hits leader. A few hundred more hits, a couple more titles, and he'll pass through Monument Park and ascend straight to sainthood.

Just like every year, SI received criticism for its choice. Jeter's not even the best player on his team, but giving the Sportsman of the Year Award to steroid user and tabloid fodder Alex Rodriguez would sort of go against the spirit of the award. And, more importantly for the moralists, what would the children think? I've also seen people ridicule Jeter's triumph as a way for "Sports Illustrated to sell magazines," an outdated notion about the media that people still use to belittle newspapers and magazines, as if Hearst and Pulitzer were still battling to sell papers by creating jingoistic fever in support of the Spanish-American War. "REMEMBER THE MAINE!" Good for selling papers. "REMEMBER THE CAPTAIN!" Not quite as exciting.

Some candidates enjoyed more dominating years - Roger Federer, Usain Bolt, Jimmie Johnson, to name three - but the Sportsman of the Year award has always been about more than on-the-field dominance. It goes to "the athlete or team whose performance that year most embodies the spirit of sportsmanship and achievement," which, like MVP awards in every sport, can be interpreted in countless ways.

Before Tom Verducci's story on Jeter, the magazine notes, "It is not so much what he accomplished at 35 - a fifth World Series ring capping a historic season, to be sure - as how he arrived at his iconic place. Being the ultimate team player and a role model synonymous with winning has brought him still another title."

So give it to Jeter. It's not like SI hasn't had more controversial picks in the past.

A list of all the Sportsman of the Year reveals a who's who of sporting legends, along with several who in the hell choices. It is fascinating to see how the award evolved as the sporting world changed.

How lucky did the magazine get with its first choice in 1954? Roger Bannister won that award for running the first sub-four-minute mile. It's one of the most famous accomplishments in sports history. People still know Roger Bannister's name, 55 years later. Name four famous distance runners today. I give up, too. Perfect timing for a young magazine handing out its first Sportsman of the Year honor.

Today track and field athletes usually only make the news if they're exposed for injecting massive amounts of steroids, or if they turn in inhuman performances such as Usain Bolt. But even Bolt's brilliance couldn't earn him the award. He was born in the wrong decade. Bobby Joe Morrow won in 1956 for winning a pair of Olympic golds, while Rafer Johnson won in 1958 for setting the decathlon world record. Oh for the days when the decathlon was one of the better known events in the world.

How about Jerry Lucas winning in 1961 for being the Final Four MVP? Certainly Lucas was a legendary college basketball player, a three-time All-American, one of the best players in Big Ten history and a national champion. But 1961...great athlete...historic season...

I don't know if Roger Maris deserves to be in the baseball hall of fame. There are decent arguments for both sides. But a guy who broke the most famous mark in sports and did it while going through unprecedented scrutiny and pressure, and did it in New York, how does he not win the award? Maris appears to have had perhaps the greatest case to be Sportsman of the Year of anyone who ever won it, yet somehow he got beaten out by a college basketball player, at a time when college hoops wasn't close to being as popular as it is now. So much for New York bias. Did Babe Ruth have a nephew on the photo staff? Someone needs to write a letter to the editor, even if it is 48 years after the fact.

Boxing has plummeted off the sporting map in this country in the last decade - ever since Mike Tyson started making headlines only for his cannibalism and not his fighting - but the Sportsman of the Year award has long-shunned the sport. Sugar Ray Leonard is the last boxer to win, back in 1981. Two speed-skaters, Bonnie Blair and Johann Olav Koss, have won it since a boxer. Speed-skaters!

Some were obvious slam dunk choices, though maybe that's a misguided assumption to make about the award considering the 1961 choice.

1980: U.S. Olympic hockey team. If the magazine wanted to be contrarian or controversial, I suppose they could have gone with Magic Johnson after his 42-point, 15-rebound performance in Game 6 of the Finals. But to not pick the Miracle on Ice team would have been unpatriotic, if not downright treasonous in some corners.

2008: Michael Phelps. Obvious, eight gold medals. Or was it? Because in 1972, seven gold medals weren't enough for the mustachioed Mark Spitz, who lost out to Billie Jean King and John Wooden.

Ali only won once - in 1974, the year he upset George Foreman - the same number of times as jockey Steve Cauthen, the 1977 winner.

While numerous legends have been honored, a surprising number of them never won. Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, two guys whose obituaries will carry the line "helped save the NBA" in the first paragraph, were both shut out. Bird's best chance came in 1986, when he won his third straight MVP and third championship. Instead, Joe Paterno got it.

In the story honoring Paterno, Rick Reilly wrote, "No, this is one for the 'stayers' of the world, one of those Irving G. Thalberg 'lifetime achievement' awards. This is for the guy who keeps churning out good stuff, always kicks in when the birthday hat comes around and never punches out before seven." Who would have guessed Paterno and his glasses would still be running around the Penn State sideline 23 years after he received a lifetime achievement award?

Magic's best chance probably came in 1987, his breakthrough individual season when he won MVP and led the Lakers to their fourth title of the decade. But while Bird got bested by a coaching legend, Magic got beat out by one of the oddest Sportsman of the Year choices.

They called it "Athletes who care," which sounds like the first three words to a United Way ad, complete with sappy instrumental music. Bob Bourne, Judi Brown King, Kip Keino, Dale Murphy, Chip Rives, Patty Sheehan, Rory Sparrow and Reggie Williams (the football player, not the former Georgetown Hoya) all shared the honor. It's hard to mock the choices, as the athletes helped handicapped children, abused children, and orphans. Then again, athletes do those things every year, sometimes receiving publicity for the work, often not. Why was 1987 suddenly the year of charity for SI?

In 1984, Edwin Moses and everyone's favorite tiny gymnast, Mary Lou Retton, shared the trophy. Moses, an Olympic hurdling star, and Retton, America's princess/sweetheart/golden girl, certainly had memorable Olympics. But those Games also included Carl Lewis, who matched Jesse Owens by winning four gold medals. Sure, the Russians weren't there because of a boycott, but Moses and Mary Lou didn't face the dreaded Communists either. Lewis, probably the greatest track and field athlete ever, never won Sportsman of the Year. But track and fielders Judi Brown King and Kip Keino - two who cared - did. Lewis is probably still bitter.

Tiger Woods is a two-time winner, the only person twice honored as an individual (Curt Schilling won along with Randy Johnson in 2001 and as part of the Red Sox in '04). Not sure Tiger's winning another one. He could win all four majors next year, save a handicapped orphan from a house fire, come up with a fail-safe vaccine for swine flu, and land a plane in the Hudson River and it wouldn't be good enough in the post-car-accidentgate world.

The fact Federer's never won is a bit odd, since he is perhaps the most dominant athlete of his generation, even more than Tiger. But it is tennis, and in recent years SI's mostly stuck to the major sports and anyone with a racquet doesn't get consideration. David Robinson and Tim Duncan shared it in 2003, the Red Sox got it in 2004, followed by yet another New Englander, Tom Brady. Dwyane Wade won in 2006, with Phelps breaking through the big-sport bubble in 2008. 2007? Brett Favre, who, like Paterno in 1986, sort of won it as a lifetime achievement award. His renaissance that year gave the magazine a reason to give it to him, though they couldn't know that he'd make his best case for the award two years later.

Coaches rarely win. Dean Smith was the last, in 1997 (sorry, Coach K). Before that Don Shula won in 1993.

Perhaps marketing did play a role in Jeter's selection. But even if it did, it doesn't mean the award is sullied or spoiled. There have been shadier reasons for giving the award to someone.

In Michael MacCambridge's outstanding Sports Illustrated bio, The Franchise, he recites the strange case of the 1983 Sportswoman of the Year. Runner Mary Decker, who'd become best known in the 1984 Olympics for tripping after getting tangled up with the barefooted Zola Budd, captured the award, raising eyebrows within the magazine. Decker had a decent season, but Martina Navratilova was the most dominant female athlete that year, and other track and field stars like Lewis and Moses also had better years. But SI's editor wasn't obsessed with those people.

MacCambridge writes, "The Decker announcement was greeted with nods and winks within SI, where [editor Gil] Rogin's infatuation (some called it an obsession) with Decker was the source of more than a few jokes. It had long been clear to most of the staff that Rogin was 'entranced by watching her run, watching her move,' as Kenny Moore put it... 'Everybody laughed behind his back,' said Deford. 'He'll do anything to get into her pants.'"

So that helps explain Decker's choice.

Now, someone explain Jerry Lucas.

Here are some of the better Sportsman of the Year stories from over the years.

Gary Smith's classic, famous story on Tiger Woods in 1996. Thousands of people are now psychoanalyzing Woods through this piece.

Another Gary Smith offering, this one on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1985.

The Roger Bannister story, although it's more a recap than a profile.

Jerry Lucas.

Michael Jordan in 1991.

The legendary Frank Deford writes about the legendary Jack Nicklaus in 1978.

And, finally, Mary Decker.

Doing our part for the magazine industry

Another day, another three magazines jammed into our mailbox, fighting desperately for space.

Today Sports Illustrated, New York, and the New Yorker all arrived, a day after Vanity Fair and Ladies' Home Journal made their monthly appearances. I'll occasionally read stories from writers who advise cutting back on subscriptions as an easy way to save money when savings accounts are being ravaged. Sounds like decent wisdom. Instead, we take it as a challenge. Cut back? No. More magazines, more hints on great travel deals, more fun and quirky recipes for cheeseburgers done differently, more features on the economic meltdown, more profiles of anorexic Hollywood starlets, more NBA previews, more movie reviews, more ways to find a spouse, more ways to please your spouse, more ways to anger your spouse, more ways to make up with your spouse.

And along with the actual bound publications, invoices and bills invade us daily, reminding us that it's URGENT that we renew now, or we'll lose our subscription.

Sometimes the statements gently scold us. They act hurt, disappointed, while also offering vague threats.

"Dear valued reader and subscriber. When we renewed your subscription, you indicated that you would like to pay at a later date. Four years later, we hope you've enjoyed reading about the best airline deals on trips to Argentina, but your bill is past due. Please respond."

The all-caps threats and stern language often intimidate me into sending off another $12 check, good for another year or two. It's like being in debt to a loan shark who has access to too much paper and postage.

Finally one day I gathered every magazine I could find in our apartment. Louise had diligently filed many of them. Others hid under the couch. Many more sat on an out-of-the-way table in their plastic wrapping, like a present left unopened on Christmas morning. I checked when the subscriptions actually ran out. No longer would the magazines hold us hostage with their junk mail disguised as threats to make this our LAST ISSUE.

At last count, here are the magazines we welcome each week, each month or every two months into the household: Sports Illustrated, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, New York, New Yorker, Atlantic, Esquire, Writer's Digest, Poets and Writers, The Writer, Nursing magazine, Good Housekeeping, Family Circle, Self, Mpls/St. Paul, Midwest Living, Parents, Ladies Home Journal, AllYou, Budget Travel, Conde Nast Traveler, Glamour, Lucky, Columbia Journalism Review, Everyday with Rachael Ray, Oprah's magazine.

Louise actually dropped a couple that were previously on the list, keeping us, for now, under triple digits. But we don't see it as a waste of money, since subscriptions are usually unbelievably inexpensive. We're getting Vanity Fair for 13 dollars. The New Yorker is about 50 for the year, but paying less than a dollar a week for some of the best writing in the country? A good deal.

We started drowning in subscriptions because we bought so many at the newsstand that it actually was a waste of money. Why spend five dollars on a single magazine when you can get 24 for 10 bucks? Sign me up!

If only they'd stop the demands and pleas for renewal. It's embarrassing for all sides. We're receiving Family Circle until 2012. I'm not sure where we'll be in three years. But I know Family Circle will forever be with us, as unshakable as a shadow. Yet last week a letter arrived, telling us we needed to take action now to ensure we didn't lose this valued publishing prize. I'd sign the damn thing and send another check but three weeks after that they'd send another letter, this one hinting that our 2018 subscription could be at stake, unless we take URGENT action.

The magazines will keep coming. We'll keep reading. They don't know how to take rejection, and we yearn for their acceptance and appreciation for subscribing once more. It might be a codependence-type thing, I'm not exactly sure.

Now where's that low, low offer from Psychology Today?

Texas executed an innocent man (most likely)

This story's getting quite a bit of publicity, but it should probably be on the front page of every newspaper in the country. The new issue of The New Yorker has a stunning story on the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham. Willingham was convicted of murdering his three little girls by setting the family's house on fire in 1991. He forever proclaimed his innocence. He was executed in 2004.

New investigations by multiple arson experts have revealed that the fire was almost certainly accidental, likely caused by faulty wiring or a space heater. And the only thing shakier than the science used to convict was the eyewitness testimony. Plus, prosecutors used Willingham's Led Zeppelin posters as evidence of his sociopathic tendencies. The story would be absurd if the tragedy didn't overwhelm it. 

The man considered by many to be the top arson investigator in the country analyzed the evidence and concluded that "there was no evidence of arson, and that a man who had already lost his three children and spent twelve years in jail was about to be executed based on "junk science." Hurst wrote his report in such a rush that he didn't pause to fix typos."

In the story, the writer, David Grann, details how the investigator dismantled every piece of scientific evidence used against Willingham. 

Hurst submitted his findings to a Texas judicial board but they ignored them. The state went ahead with the execution. In the movie True Crime with Clint Eastwood, he saves a wrongly convicted inmate in the final seconds while the man's on the lethal injection table. This is a true-life version of that fictional tale. But in the real version, the man died.

Here's the complete story.

And Grann conducted an online chat on Wednesday. Read it here.