TIME'S Sept. 5 issue with New York's go-go Mets on its cover was hardly off the presses before the letters started pouring in. "I winced," groaned one New Yorker. "A TIME cover has so often been a hex. Let's hope the Mets survive your curse." Chuckled a Chicagoan, whose Cubs were then still in first place: "Many thanks for the 'kiss of death' cover story on the Mets." Shortly thereafter, the Mets swept a three-game series with the Cubs, and the rest is glorious history. Cartoonist Willard Mullin, who drew the original cover, shows how baseball's amazing babies have suddenly grown to manhood.

The notion that a TIME SPORT cover is a jinx dates back to the 1930s--possibly to the day in 1936 when a spectacular rookie named Joe DiMaggio went 0 for 5 at the plate and flubbed two easy chances in the field just as his portrait appeared on TIME'S cover. Long-memoried readers sometimes remind us that Leo Durocher's year-long banishment from baseball started with his cover in April 1947, that Golfer Ben Hogan lost the Los Angeles Open the week of his cover in 1949 and that undefeated Navy was stunningly upset by S.M.U. in 1963 as TIME'S cover on Quarterback Roger Staubach went to press. Yet TIME'S editors plead innocent of any whammy. Overall, the good luck has overwhelmingly outweighed the bad. Golfer Jack Nicklaus and Prizefighter Cassius Clay, for example, were relative unknowns when they were on TIME'S cover; within a year they were at the pinnacle of their sports. Decathlon Ace Bob Mathias, Tennis Star Althea Gibson and Hockey Great Bobby Hull, to name just a few, will testify that no gremlins visited them after TIME covers. As for baseball, Detroit's Denny McLain responded to his cover story last year by going on to win an incredible 31 games--and then helped his Tiger teammates to a World Series victory. But our best witness for the defense has got to be America's Cup Yachtsman Bus Mosbacher, who was on our cover in August 1967. A few weeks later, he sailed Intrepid to four straight victories for the U.S. over Australian Challenger Dame Pattie. And guess what Bus had pasted below decks to Intrepid's bulkhead? That's right. TIME'S cover.

Readers may be surprised to see that this week's BOOKS section contains 70 capsule reviews instead of the usual full-length critiques. The idea was born one day recently when Senior Editor Tim Foote and BOOKS Reviewer George Dickerson were examining the enormous fall list. "Let's do them all," said George, jokingly. "All right, let's," replied Foote, and assigned himself 16 books. Dickerson got 13 and Reviewer Ron Sheppard wound up with twelve; the rest were spread out among 18 other staffers. "There are so many books in the fall," says Foote. "And they're like messages in bottles. We hate to think of what we're missing."

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