Even a respected baseball research operation such as STATS Inc., which independently scores games and records details, isn't immune to the bogus numbers. Each year, they tabulate the season's longest home runs, rounded off to 10-foot increments to emphasize their approximate nature. Thinking these were autonomous judgments by their scorers, I asked for STATS's data on 1997's five longest dingers.

McGwire's shot came in at 540 feet, and the others were also within a few feet of MCI's figures. It turns out that they simply round off the MCI numbers, creating a second set of slightly different numbers that appear to confirm the first one. Occasionally, however, STATS comes up with an independent estimate, and when it does the disparities can be immense. The Colorado Rockies estimated an April 20, 1997, McGwire home run at 514 feet, while STATS deemed it to be only 440 feet. In 1995, STATS logged a Denver home run by visiting Dodger Raul Mondesi as 510 feet, while the home-park crew thought it went only 463 feet.