19th Hole: The Readers Take Over

EAST OF EDEN
Sirs:
You dirty dogs! Having spent the greater part of November in Tahiti, Moorea and Bora-Bora and, finally, having suppressed my Polynesia-mania to the point where it only hurts when I smile, what am I confronted with but a 10-page spread on paradise in the January 15 issue of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED (Paradise on a Precipice). In glorious color, no less! And this is not to mention Coles Phinizy's great article on Erwin Christian, who graciously showed us the splendors in the lagoon in Bora-Bora.

Now I ask you, is that any way to run a magazine?
CAROLE KIRCHER
Chevy Chase, Md.

Sirs:
Regarding your January 15 issue featuring Band-Aid bathing suits, don't you feel a sense of responsibility to the moral development of your impressionable young readers? Just what kind of sports are you people illustrating, anyway?
Mrs. JOHN J. HERB
Tonawanda, N.Y.

Sirs:
I strongly object to your sending covers like this into my home.
Mrs. F. R. FUNK
La Crosse, Wis.

Sirs:
What next? Goren's bridge page with a naked queen of hearts? The Celtics take a shower? C'mon. With six curious offspring about, I wish you'd have more overclad goalies and fewer underclad girlies.
JOYCE ROGERS
Portland, Me.

Sirs:
My steady girl threatens to cancel my SI subscription if there are any more covers like that.
MIKE GRENIER
Lawrence, Mass.

Sirs:
When my sons chide me, a grandfather, for having a girlie magazine in my den and my wife, after seeing me reading the many issues of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, suddenly asks what kind of a new magazine I received that date, I have had it.

When my subscription to your magazine expires, I do not know. But we will both know whenever it is because that is the final issue as far as I am concerned.
JOSEPH NAGY Jr.
Livonia, Mich.

Sirs:
Stop, stop, you heartless, impious fiends! Every year in the depth of winter and, invariably, during a cold snap when the mercury is approaching 50° below and the pines are splitting apart and the furnace oil is sludging in the fuel lines, you bring out an issue featuring the latest in swimwear, modeled on some lush Caribbean or South Pacific isle with crystal-clear blue waters lapping at glistening white sand beaches. Here the ice has been on the lake for three months and will remain for another four.

Besides your cruel reminder of better days and elsewhere, I must object on moral grounds to your full-page pictures of tropical cuties in swimming suits so small and/or transparent as to be difficult to see. After all, if God had wanted girls to run around nude, they'd have been born that way.
JOEL T. DEWEESE
Bemidji, Minn.