As we approach the end of another baseball season, the topic of how many home runs certain players will hit becomes important to the sport’s fans.

Leading a league in home runs is one of the more prestigious honors a baseball player can earn. If a home run leader should break a record in the process of accomplishing that feat, that is even better.

At the beginning of the 20th century, baseball executives made some efforts to standardize the game’s rules and to keep copious statistics. Thus, they ushered in what many baseball aficionados refer to as the sport’s “modern era.”

But baseball in the...