The "TIME jinx" cry is on again. Sugar Ray Robinson, it says, was voodooed out of his world middleweight crown last week (see Sport) by his picture on the June 25 TIME cover.

Some sport columnists had chanted the hex legend earlier, when Robinson took a "no decision" in his Berlin fight three days after the cover was published.

The legend, started long ago, snowballed from a few sport covers whose subjects ran into misfortune. Examples:

Joe DiMaggio (July 13, 1936), spectacular rookie, played with the American League All-Stars the week his cover | came out, made no hits in five times up, fumbled two ground balls. Score: National League 4; American League 3. (The jinx, if jinx it was, did not seem to bother DiMaggio's playing from that point on.) Tom Harmon (Nov. 6, 1939), Michigan's All-America back, made but one touchdown the next Saturday, while mediocre Illinois stopped him for one of the season's biggest upsets. Score: Illinois 16; Michigan 7.

Elizabeth Arden Graham (May 6, 1946), owner of Kentucky Derby favorites Knockdown and Lord Boswell, lost her Arlington Park (Ill.) stable in the worst fire of horse-racing history -- on the same day that TIME'S story on her hit the newsstands. Two days later her Derby entries finished out of the money.

Leo Durocher (April 14, 1947), then baseball's highest-paid manager, was suspended for the entire season a day before his cover picture got to Brooklyn. (Durocher's luck nowadays is better than that of the Commissioner who booted him.)

Ben Hogan (Jan. 10, 1949), 1948's golfer of the year and favorite for most top 1949 tournaments, lost the $15,000 Los Angeles Open Tournament during the week of the cover and three weeks later suffered a near-fatal accident in his car. (Hogan's subsequent comeback is one of the great sport stories of the decade.)

Less remembered are the covers that worked out as four-leaf clovers for the people they featured. Among the 17 sport covers since World WarII, 12 seem to have brought at least as much good luck as bad.

Glen Davis and Doc Blanchard (Nov. 12, 1945), Army's Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside, romped over Notre Dame the week of the cover. Score: 48-0. Then they charged through the rest of their second unbeaten season.

Pauline Betz (Sept. 2, 1946), top woman tennis player, lost only one set in seven matches while winning the U.S. Women's Singles Championship in the week of the cover.

Frank Leahy (Oct. 14, 1946), Notre Dame football coach, had just started a no-loss streak that lasted four years.

Bob Chappuis (Nov. 3, 1947), flashy Michigan halfback, tossed the pass that set up the winning touchdown against Illinois the Saturday after the cover appeared. His play for the rest of the season, while helping Michigan take the Big 10 title, made him one of the two men to rate all four Major All America teams. Then he set a Rose Bowl record by passing and running 279 yards.

Ben Jones (May 30, 1949) was the leading U.S. trainer whose horse Citation went on that year to win the Triple Crown for Calumet Farm. With Jones still top trainer, Citation last week became the first thoroughbred to pass the million-dollar mark in earnings (see Sport).

The TIME jinx legend is something like the old baseball taboo -- never, before the last out is called, tell the man on the mound that he is pitching a no-hit game (as if he didn't know it). If anybody gets a single, the informant is accused of jinxing the pitcher. Not only sports figures, but many other top news personalities (such as politicians, businessmen and generals) are engaged in highly competitive enterprises. They may, like Thomas Dewey, two weeks after an October 1944 cover, get knocked out of the box. They may, like Marshal Stalin after eight different cover portraits, keep right on throwing the same old curves. Win, lose, or draw, they are news.

Cordially yours,

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