Columnist Ron Kantowski: More unreal sports from SI

Thursday, Sept. 5, 2002 | 9:54 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's insider notes column appears Tuesday and his Page One column appears Thursday. He can be reached at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

Sidd Finch, meet Simonya Popova.

You remember Sidd Finch. He was the one-hiking-boot wearing, 168-mph fastball-chucking figment of Sports Illustrated's imagination who stepped beyond the boundary of fiction and reality. Finch was the creation of author and former Detroit Lions backup quarterback George Plimpton, who, upon running out of sports teams who would allow him to play quarterback or tend goal in preseason games, set about deluding gullible readers with a cleverly spun yarn of a mysterious New York Mets' pitching sensation.

At least SI had the good sense to tip off savvy readers to the ruse, beginning with the date the story appeared: April 1, 1985. And outside of the dimwitted KAOS agents who had Maxwell Smart surrounded, is there anybody who would fall for a report of a heater that clocked 168 mph on a JUGS gun?

But in its current edition, the nation's premier sports magazine is much more devious in fabricating Popova, who is presented as a 17-year-old amalgamation of the powerful Williams sisters and winsome Anna Kournikova.

As the headline reads: "The WTA tour is desperately seeking a new star to embody its ideal of strength, attitude, and sex appeal. Meet Simonya Popova."

Other than a dubious photo illustration of the faux Ms. Popova -- the graphics department might as well have air-brushed Lee Harvey Oswald's head onto a model's body -- you had to read to the very last line to deduce that Popova and Finch are first cousins.

" ... Popova is precisely the player longed for by a tour that's losing its mojo," wrote L. Jon Wertheim (I guess that's his real name). "If only she existed."

The rest of the story is more believable than the '73 Mets. If there were any 168-mph fastballs lurking between the lines, I didn't see them.

The purpose of the story, I think, was to address the state of women's tennis, and to suggest that it has bigger problems/concerns than Kournikova's inability to hit a passing shot and somebody not named Williams hanging around for the finals.

Why SI didn't just give us that story without the cheesecake embellishment, I'll never know. In that today's women's tour is supposed to be thriving, it was enlightening to learn that attendance at WTA events in North America declined in 2001 while the thought-to-be moribund men's tour showed an increase.

Instead, the magazine felt compelled to weave those facts around fiction that at times reads like soft-core pornography.

"Strikingly attractive, her skin and hair colored by the sun, Popova is dripping sweat like a busted faucet," Wertheim writes in the story's introduction. Then later, " ... her midriff-baring outfits, so small they appear to come from Gap Kids, highlight her ample decolletage (easy guys, that's French for neck and shoulders). She has already agreed to pose for the tour's annual swimsuit calendar."

There's no telling what Popova has posed for in the writer's vivid imagination. Hey, if I want a Mickey Spillane novel, I'll borrow one from my uncle.

I suppose there are those who will applaud SI for showing creativity during non-swimsuit edition season. But shame on the magazine for comprising its integrity for the purpose of showing a little more leg.

And for pulling ours when it wasn't necessary.