Barking up the wrong tree

A paper a decade ago attempted to bridge the gap between baseball players over the past century. Co-authors Shane Reese and Scott Berry found that performance was improving, but not uniformly. For instance, baseball players' improvement in hitting home runs was much more dramatic than their batting-average gains -- perhaps because of steroids, which wasn't controlled for.

Researchers for Baseball Prospectus, a sort of think tank for the diamond, also quantified how the sport got more difficult over time. The analyses found that Babe Ruth would continue to shine in today's game.

Mr. Ruth would have had a lower batting average, but he would have hit 199 more homers, making him the greatest home-run hitter ever. End of debate -- nearly.

Here are more things you probably didn't know about sports.