When I was growing up in the late 1960s and early-to-mid ’70s, I anxiously awaited the arrival of Sports Illustrated each week, and I just hated it when the post office was late delivering it. Back in the days before ESPN, USA Today, and the World Wide Web, I depended on SI for in-depth coverage of the players and games I loved to watch. Through articles written by the likes of Frank Deford, Larry Keith, Dan Jenkins, Curry Kirkpatrick, and many others, my heroes and teams came alive. Now, thanks to internet technology, you can go back in time and read most everything from the SI archive, all the way back to Issue No. 1 from August 15, 1954. For instance, last week I was able to pull up an article from a January 1970 issue by Deford on the ABA’s Carolina Cougars, who—along with the league’s red-white-and-blue balls, colorful characters, and three-point shots—were a big part of my childhood sports world. The articles, however, are not just collected in an online database, each and every issue, from cover to cover, ads and all, have been scanned in and are accessible through a special viewer. So head on over to the time machine that is the SI Vault and enjoy a time in sports when money, greed, and drugs were the exception rather than the rule.