Mo’ne Davis Makes Illustrated History

The firsts keep coming for Mo’ne Davis, the 13-year-old pitcher from Philadelphia’s Taney Dragonswho became the first girl to throw a shutout in LIttle League World Series history last Friday.

Now she’s the first Little Leaguer to make the national cover of Sports Illustrated. The magannounced Tuesday that Davis would cover their issue dated Aug. 25, with the headline “Remember Her Name.”

People aren’t going to have trouble with that. With the help of her 70-mph fastball, Davis threw a two-hit shutout Friday against the LLWS team from Nashville, striking out eight en route to capturing the nation’s attention. She’s been covered on every sports news platform, of course, but she’s fully become a pop-culture talking point too.

While super serious sports people might think it’s silly to put a 13-year-old girl playing Little League on the cover of SI, the magazine thinks otherwise. From SI.com:

“Last week, this week, maybe next week, she’s owned the sports conversation,” Sports Illustrated manager editor Chris Stone said. “How often do you get to say this about a 13-year-old girl? It’s the easiest type of story to identify as a cover story.”

“The writer, Albert Chen, said it perfectly in the story, ‘She’s a lot of things to a lot of different people, all of them good things: a totem for inner-city baseball, a role model for your 10-year-old niece, a role model for your 10-year-old nephew,’ ” Stone said. “Most of all, she’s a laid-back kid just having a really good time.”