I recently acquired this magazine in an auction. It is extremely rare. The description below was written by the auctioneer himself and tells the story of it's origin.
Not exactly where you would expect a picture of Dorothy Stratten--or not exactly what you would expect on the cover of a baseball magazine--but this one dates back twenty years, to the summer of 1980. How did this all come to be? Actually, Dorothy was in Vancouver in July of 1979 on a promotional tour for Playboy. Vancouver, of course, went ga-ga because Dorothy Hoogstraten was a Vancouver girl and had just appeared in Playboy. She threw out the first pitch prior to a Saturday evening game. Towards the end of the year, Dorothy was named 1980 Playmate of the Year. Capitalizing on her popularity, the baseball team decided to run a picture of her on the cover of their program during the 1980 season (it was the second of four issues of the program for the year). There is also a black-and-white photo of Dorothy inside, taken while she was at the game in 1979, receiving a kiss from Vancouver catcher Ned Yost (who caught her ceremonial first pitch). Ned Yost went on to play in the major leagues with the Milwaukee Brewers, and for the past decade has been the bullpen coach for the Atlanta Braves. Dorothy, sadly, had her life ended by her estranged husband in a murder-suicide. She was looked upon by the Playboy organization as something of a rising star--a natural actress who had no prior training in the craft, who projected an innocence quite contrary to the surgically enhanced and airbrushed look which more routinely typified Playboy 'beauty'. It is sadly ironic that Playboy's hopes for her were extinguished by a man whose objectification of women was nurtured in a society profoundly shaped by their own magazine's values.
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