I don’t read as much Joe Posnanski as I should.  His feed is in my Google Reader, but truth be told his posts are usually long enough to dissuade me from reading most of the time.  Weak, I know.  But I read his latest, and his latest was a fantastic post that I feel obligated to pass along.

Simply put, this post encompasses much of what is passed over in far too many steroid rants.  Posnanski discusses other non-steroid factors that have caused home run totals to fluctuate through the years, whether or not there are eras in baseball that produced “authentic” numbers, and a few other things while debunking a ridiculous Carlton Fisk quote and presenting some vital history of various eras.

It’s 3500 words long, so more like a featured magazine story than a blog post, but it’s definitely worth it.

Check it out.