14 YEARS LATER, '79 MAGAZINE DELIVERED

When Joe F. Gambill opened his new copy of Sports Illustrated recently, he was surprised to see baseball great, retired pitcher Nolan Ryan, on the cover.

And, he should have been.

The magazine he received in the mail two weeks ago was the July 23, 1979, issue of SI, published July 23, 1979.

The magazine still had the original 1979 postal label on the cover.

"I first thought that it was a promotion by Sports Illustrated," Gambill said. "It was in a plastic bag and it's been years since the magazine came packaged in bags."

Gambill, a Cape Girardeau County commissioner and retired from Biokyowa Inc. here, has been a subscriber to Sports Illustrated since the magazine started publication in 1954.

"I decided to check my collection," said Gambill, who didn't start collecting SI until 1965.

The collection was missing one issue, July 23, 1979. The collection is complete now, from 1965 through the latest 1995 issue, totaling more than 1,500 magazines.

"It's unexplainable where the magazine has been the past 14 years," Gambill said. "It could have dropped behind a desk in the post office somewhere."

Postal authorities at Cape Girardeau were puzzled.

"This is the first time I've heard of a magazine being lost," said Matthew Peters, manager of customer service at the post office at Cape Girardeau. "We've had letters which were lost for a short period of time."

It's also unusual that a postal explanation didn't accompany the magazine, Peters said.

"We explain where and when the delayed mail was found," Peters said. "We've been fortunate here. We haven't had that many lost letters."

The last misplaced letter at the Cape Girardeau Post Office was about two years ago, he added.

Meanwhile, Gambill is glad to have his "missing" magazine in his SI collection.

"I have read the magazine now, and it's ready to be placed in the collection," he said.