No peach schnapps necessary.

SportsIllustrated.com has granted access to much of the historical magazine’s database, totaling 54 years back to its inception. Cover, photos, articles, even entire magazines in their entirety (with ads!) are available for our perusal, no fee required.

SI is looking for an edge over rivals Yahoo! Sports, ESPN, and others in a competitive sports portal market. The current trend is an ad supported business model, as other magazines turned website businesses such as the New York Times made available their back catalogs.

Browse the magazine with the Graig Nettles and Goose Gossage cover from April 1984, plus added bonus naked Jim Palmer. You won’t be disappointed!

Here’s an excerpt from a 1989 story that detailed the batting title race between Tony Gwynn and Will Clark. By the way I love Tony. Somehow I don’t think I’m the only one.

“This year is going to be the toughest year for me to win because Will knows how to handle pressure,” says Gwynn. “There were four guys in it with me at the end of last season, but I didn’t worry about them because they had never known what it was like to get up every morning and have to choke down some other guy’s three-for-four with your corn flakes. Will’s a great hitter who’s never won the batting title, but I think he really wants it.”

Find any jewels? More naked Jim Palmer? Let us know in the comments!

SI Vault - 54 Years Of Sports History

Yeah Goose! Elected to the hall from back when men were men, closers were closers, and he who controlled the mustache controlled the world.

There are enough opinions out there if you’re interested, especially in re: Tim Raines. You have to be excited when a former Padre goes in, especially in this particularly well uniformed era, but for some reason the hall of fame debate doesn’t interest me that much. Mostly the making fun of things is what I find entertaining. The rest of this post will be spent talking about whatever I feel like.

What excites me is the new simpsons references tag, which you can see on the right sidebar there. We went back and added other posts that include our trademark brand of semi-complete references to the greatest first 10 seasons of all time.

I hope we don’t get sued for that picture of the Goose. The guy I stole it from had it posted on flickr, so lets hope he gets served first. So yeah. Turn on the New Hampshire primary coverage. Or make some Padres Miis. Either way.

Hopefully Ray will be able to save this post.