The biggest crowd in Storm history packed Climate Pledge Arena for Sue Bird’s final regular season home game.
Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. You have to love how Seattle showed out for Sue Bird.
In today’s SI:AM:
⛳ The LIV vs. PGA Tour lawsuit
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The Aces spoiled the party
Sue Bird is hanging it up after two decades in the WNBA and got a fitting sendoff yesterday in Seattle.
A sold-out crowd of more than 18,000—the largest in franchise history—showed up for her final regular season home game with the Storm. It was a remarkable scene. Here’s what it looked like to SI’s Greg Bishop.
And here’s what it looked like on TV as Bird was introduced in the starting lineup to the raucous cheers of the crowd.
The crowd may have been the largest in Storm history, but it wasn’t exactly a surprise that Seattle fans showed up in large numbers to see Bird. The team is leading the WNBA in attendance this season by a wide margin, averaging more than 10,000 per game, while the Mercury are second with 7,700.
The Aces won yesterday’s game, 89–81, but the mood was still jubilant after the game as Bird addressed the crowd.
“I’m not going to lie, it kind of sucks to lose my last game. But you know what, I lost my first game too. So it’s OK,” Bird told the crowd.
(You can watch her whole address to the crowd here, as well as her postgame interview with ESPN’s Holly Rowe.)
The loss could end up deciding whether Bird gets to play another game in Seattle. The Storm are 20–13 with three games left to play, good for fourth in the league. If the Mystics (currently fifth at 20–14) can overtake them in the standings, their best-of-three playoff series would begin with two games in Washington and the Storm would have to win at least one game to give themselves a home playoff game.
The Storm’s pursuit of home court advantage is just one of several fascinating playoff races to watch over the WNBA’s final week. There are currently five teams fighting for the final two playoff spots, all separated by one game. Only the Fever (5–29) have been eliminated from postseason contention. Everybody else is still alive.
Whenever an athlete retires after a two-decade career, it’s the end of an era—but that’s especially true in Bird’s case. She joined the Storm just two years after they entered the league. It’s impossible to imagine the franchise without her. Even further, the WNBA was just five years old during her rookie season. It’s impossible to imagine the league without her. But, thanks in large part to players like Bird, the WNBA is an excellent place today. There may never be another Sue Bird but there will be plenty of other standout point guards because Bird helped pave the way. If you’re wondering who the league’s next great playmaker will be, look no further than Sabrina Ionescu, who this weekend became the first player in WNBA history to record 500 points, 200 assists and 200 rebounds in a single season.
The best of Sports Illustrated
Bob Harig went through the LIV Golf players’ lawsuit against the PGA Tour and it’s ugly. … Erling Haaland’s Premier League debut couldn’t have gone much better, Avi Creditor writes. … Albert Breer stopped by 49ers camp and came away very impressed by Brandon Aiyuk. … The current glut of American players in the Premier League bodes well for the USMNT’s World Cup fortunes, Brian Straus writes.
Around the sports world
Oklahoma wide receivers coach Cale Gundy resigned after reading a slur during a meeting. … Rays pitching coach Kyle Snyder injured his calf while walking out for a mound visit. … Bobby Bonilla’s ill-fated contract with the Mets sold at auction for nearly $200,000. … Browns running back Kareem Hunt has reportedly requested a trade. … Braves starter Ian Anderson, who was a key piece of their World Series-winning rotation last year, was sent down to Triple A as he continues to struggle this season. … Nick Kyrgios won his first tour singles event in three years.
The top five...
… things I saw yesterday:
5. Jacob deGrom, in his second start back from injury, throwing the fastest strikeout pitch of his career.
4. Daniel Vogelbach’s hustle to score from first.
3. Dejounte Murray’s dunk over Paolo Banchero.
2. Chiefs safety Justin Reid’s 65-yard field goal in practice.
1. Sue Bird’s interaction with a young fan sitting courtside.
SIQ
The White Sox debuted their infamous uniforms with shorts on this day in 1976. How many games did they end up playing in them?
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Friday’s SIQ: Who won the first Olympic baseball gold medal?
Answer: Cuba, which defeated Chinese Taipei 11–1 in the gold medal game.
Three players, all pitchers, from that team later defected and played in MLB: Osvaldo Fernández (Reds and Giants), Rolando Arrojo (Devil Rays, Rockies, Red Sox) and Orlando Hernández (who won four World Series with the Yankees and White Sox).
Ermidelio Urrutia’s son, Henry, had a cup of coffee with the Orioles and Lourdes Gourriel is the father of current major leaguers Yuli Gurriel and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. (the elder Gourriel spells his last name differently). Another gold medalist, Víctor Mesa, is the father of two Marlins prospects—Victor Victor Mesa and Victor Mesa Jr.—who were signed in 2018 to deals with combined signing bonuses of more than $6 million.
Before 1992, baseball had been contested at some early versions of the modern Olympics but never as a medal event. At the 1912 Games in Stockholm, a team made up of U.S. track and field athletes played an exhibition game against a local baseball club. Baseball was contested as a demonstration sport at the ’84 and ’88 Games in Los Angeles and Seoul before it was added as an official part of the program in Barcelona in ’92. It was included in the program last summer in Tokyo but won’t be part of the 2024 Games in Paris, although it’s expected to return in ’28 when the Games go back to L.A.
From the Vault: Aug. 8, 1955
John Zimmerman
I was initially going to approach this as, “Hey, look at this fringe sport that once got featured on the cover of SI!” But after doing some research, it seems like archery is way more popular than I ever realized.
The Aug. 8, 1955 cover story, written by Reginald Wells, details the popularity of archery in the United States, both among target shooters (like 16-year-old national champion Ann Marston) and bow hunters:
The urge to shoot bows and arrows has been with man for some 100,000 years. In modern times it begins and ends for many people in childhood with a dime store suction-cup type of bow-and-arrow set and nothing better to shoot at than the neighbor's cat or the bathroom mirror.
Today an estimated 4 million men, women and children participate in some form of archery, and because it can be enjoyed by young and old alike, it is becoming America's fastest-growing family sport. At least three-fourths of our population has at some time been a “plinker” with the bow and arrow, but the history of archery as a bona fide sport in the U.S. goes back to 1828 when a group of young men founded the United Bowmen of Philadelphia. For almost a century, archery remained the esoteric pursuit of a few enthusiasts. Then Dr. Saxton Pope, a big-game hunter from California, killed a slew of African lions with a longbow. This feat ignited the imaginations of sportsmen everywhere and set archery on an upward flight of popularity that hasn’t yet reached its zenith.
Four million people sounded like a ton of archers to me. That’s about 2.4% of the estimated American population at that time. But that’s nothing compared to today.
According to a 2015 study conducted by Responsive Management on behalf of Archery Trade Association, an estimated 23.8 million adults in the U.S. participated in archery, or 9.9% of the adult population. That seemed preposterous to me. You’re telling me one in 10 American adults can shoot a bow and arrow, and does so on a somewhat regular basis? Maybe it’s because I live in the densely populated Northeast but I don’t know anyone who’s an archer. But then I looked up archery clubs near me and saw two within a half-hour drive, so what do I know? Wells was right when he wrote that archery’s “upward flight of popularity [...] hasn’t yet reached its zenith.”
Check out more of SI’s archives and historic images at vault.si.com.
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