A Letter From The Publisher, Jun. 3, 1974

Five years ago, Philip Taubman, a summer intern in TIME'S San Francisco bureau, reported our first story on Reggie Jackson, then a powerful but temperamental young outfielder. Taubman went on to graduate from Stanford in 1970, spent three years in Boston as a TIME correspondent, and joined the New York writing staff as a contributing editor last year. Appropriately, Taubman, long a rabid baseball fan, writes about sports. Even more appropriately, his first cover story—which he reported as well as wrote—is about Jackson, now the undisputed superstar of the Oakland Athletics.

The Jackson-Taubman...