Read More Sports Illustrated

I've been meaning to put up a long, praise-filled post on the absolute awesomeness that is SI.com's new SI Vault site. 54 years of Sports Illustrated articles from the archives, featuring a terrific search engine and a means to unearth some wonderful writing from when SI was THE voice in sports journalism. If you're a sports fan, you've got to hit it up.

Over the last few days, I've come across:

+ One of my favorite SI article's of all time: Steve Wulf's mean-spirited and sanctimonious hatchet job on Michael Jordan's attempt to play professional baseball.

+ This late '80s piece on the execrable Seattle Mariners that tries to tie their perpetual mediocrity to God, Hispanics and, of course, the Kingdome.

+ An over-the-hill Reggie Jackson, as a 1987 Oakland Athletic, offers up his views on race relations in baseball and society. Twenty years later, it's fascinating how well (and, at times, poorly) this article has held up.

+ Former A's ace Dave Stewart talks about his role within the Oakland community in the aftermath of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake that interrupted the World Series.

+ As part of a cover story on "One Day in Baseball", SI spent a doubleheader with, umm…a certain team's bullpen. Absolutely terrific writing on an otherwise anonymous crew.

+ Jose Canseco, in a piece that would annihilate Bill Simmons' Unintentional Comedy scale, gets all high and mighty on drug use, steroids, fame and fan expectations.

+ 25 years ago, there were a lot of people who'd anointed Rickey Henderson, Dwayne Murphy and Tony Armas as the greatest outfield in the game. This is a fine first person account of who these three are and it includes the description "overdeveloped buttocks".