The early days of Sports Illustrated magazine had a lot more variety to the types of sports featured on the cover. From week to week, you might see anything from trout fishing, sailing, or hunting to the more familiar images of Football, Basketball, Hockey and Baseball.
Our cover image this week is from the January 17, 1955 issue of Sports Illustrated. It shows a Mexican bullfighter in action. I have to admit that when I started going through the images in this issue, I was not impressed with what I was seeing. I really didn’t know that this was literally a fight to the death.
The article acknowledges that many people are put off by the fact that these bulls were essentially tortured and killed in this sport. However, it still had a strong fan base that did fill stadiums of more than 50,000 people at up to $300 per ticket. A top bull fighter in the 1950’s could earn hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
As with any sport, there are always people who try to find an advantage. I found it very interesting that in bull fighting they would sometimes shave the bull’s horns by a few centimeters. This act caused the bulls to misjudge their attacks and miss the bull fighter. It was such a problem that a postmortem was required to detect horn shaving and stiff fines were implemented.
While I’m not a fan of the sport, I wouldn’t want to be one of the guys standing in front of a bull. There was definitely serious risk to the bull fighters. This article indicated that in 1954 Spain saw one in four bullfighters seriously gored and there were two deaths. The power behind these animals is incredible. I once saw a bull jump in a river only to realize he couldn’t get up the other side. In a matter of seconds, the bull thrashed the riverbanks with his horns and when the dust settled, he simply walked up the newly sloped river bank.
Cheerleading 1950's style!
In a comparison between collegiate sport and professional sports this article quickly points out one area where the collegiate sports rival the pros. That area is cheerleading. In this image, cheerleaders encourage the Bradley basketball team while they fight against Holy Cross. Unfortunately, Bradley fell short this time in a 89-81 loss.
Ford Cars
They may guzzle gas at a rate that most of us wouldn’t want to consider today, but these are fantastic looking cars. In 1955 you could buy a base model Ford Thunderbird for less than $3,000.
Women's Tennis
Ambidextrous Tennis star Beverly Baker Fleitz in action. Beverly Baker Fleitz was a top ranked American tennis player. In 1955 she was number three in the world. Beverly was inducted into the Southern California Tennis Association Hall of Fame in 2005.
We look forward to hearing from our readers. Please leave a comment and let us know if you remember something from this period of time.
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