What is a sports statistic worth?

Sports are defined by rules, and these rules are aribitrary.  A football field is 100 yards long, not 90 or 120, for example.  Why not?  Because it would change the game in some respect.  There are four bases on a baseball field, but there could just as easily be three, or five.  Some authority has chosen these parameters to define what is, and isn't, their sport.  If football was played on a basketball court, it would neither be basketball nor football.

In the course of playing these games some players rise to distinguish themselves for being considered talented at that sport.  What does that mean really?  That given the perameters of their sport, these people excel.  If one must do cartwheels from one hole to another in golf, would Tiger Woods still be considered an excellent player?  Maybe there's some cartwheelin' maniac who would kick butt in golf then, and his or her face would grace Wheaties boxes instead.  Could Tiger excel at baseball?  Probably not, since that sport plays with a different set of perameters than Tiger trained for. 
It was said during the steroid doping scandals of baseball that those stars who test positive for steroids should have an asterisk beside their statistics, because back in the days of Babe Ruth, people didnt have human growth hormone to bulk up.  In fact, everyone who plays should have an asterisk, since nutritional information and physiology have vastly improved an athlete's conditioning over the life of the sport; players today are in far better shape to play a game with arbitrarily established rules than those who played in the past with arbitrarily established rules.  Life expectancy alone has risen considerably from Babe Ruth's day, and by the standards of today would be the equivalent of a 40 year old man at the beginning of his career.  Not to mention that Babe Ruth was known for partying it up before a game--so to most accurately compare his stats with those of any other baseball player's, that player must have been shaking off a hangover at the time of play just like the Babe.

With so many qualifications and such a narrow set of parameters to define "greatness" in a sport, I'm going to say that I'm the greatest living athlete who ever posted on this blog, and mean it.