SAN FRANCISCO—As front-office executives surveyed the damage done to their record-keeping facility, Major League Baseball announced Monday that it had lost millions of stats Monday in a devastating warehouse blaze. “It is with a heavy heart that I share today the news of an accidental fire that has reduced to ash the millions of baseball statistics we have collected over more than a century,” said MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, explaining that all players and teams, past and present, had been stripped of their titles and records, none of which could be independently verified without the lost data. “These were unfortunately the only copies of many of these stats that we had, meaning there is no hope of recovering the historic slugging percentages, earned run averages, or win-loss records of your favorite teams and players. Sadly, we no longer have any idea who has the most career home runs or no-hitters, and any theory as to why Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, or Pedro Martinez were so highly regarded is now squarely in the domain of speculation.” At press time, Manfred paid tribute to the brave souls who lost their lives attempting to save the stats for the 2003 Detroit Tigers.
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