For those who take their baseball in the traditionally savory National League format, a headier, more nuanced game that employs different breeds of players with more diverse skill sets, the sport's recent comparative literature is regarded as a series of statistical quirks rather than, say, an inconvenient truth.

Head-to-head against the American League product, National League teams have not won a World Series game since 2003 and lost 29 of the past 41. National League teams have not won an All-Star Game since 1996. But never has an apparent disparity presented itself in such dramatic terms as in the 2006 round of interleague play that ends today.

Including the unexpected North Shore mugging last night of the Detroit Tigers by the Pirates (now a rousing 13-37 when the opponent scores first), American League teams have won 155 of the 244 interleague games played. The Tigers, Chicago White Sox, Boston Red Sox, Minnesota Twins and Seattle Mariners are a staggering 70-13. Even the Tampa Bay Devil Rays are 11-5, and the Kansas City Royals, the arithmetic-worst club in ball, are 9-7, including 3-0 against your Pirates.

"I really don't pay that much attention to interleague play, but it does surprise me that it's been so lopsided," said Jim Leyland before his club pretty literally dropped its third interleague game in 17 decisions. "Why, I have no idea. Next year, it could be reversed."

Which is only exactly right and only the reason causational discussions generally do little more than drag the rhetoric down dead-end streets. Before this summer, in the first nine years of interleague play, the National League had won 1,104 games, the American League 1,095, a differential of four thousandths of a percentage point across 2,199 games.

But Leyland and his bullpen coach, former Pirates manager Lloyd McClendon, in their first extended exposure to American League ball after a combined 19 years of managing in the other league, have impartial observations that are hardly irrelevant.

"There are better offensive players in this league," McClendon said without much prodding. "Guys that do more with the bat, by which I mean hitting the ball out of the ballpark. That wasn't a knock on the talent in the National League, but it's a different situation over here, so you're comparing apples to oranges. The lineups over here are just so much deeper.

"You look at a National League lineup and you see there are 12 outs you can just get, [usually] the seven, eight, nine hitters."

Though a comparison of lineups last night carries with it a cautionary Bugs Bunny vs. Gashouse Gorillas factor, Leyland, playing without the designated hitter, wrote a lineup in which the 6-7-8 hitters had 47 homers. With the DH, those would be his 7-8-9 hitters.

By contrast, the Pirates, who've hit more homers than 10 of the 16 National League teams, posted a lineup in which the 3-4-5 hitters had 28 homers.

"National League teams can't be put together like teams over here," said Gene Lamont, another former Pirates manager on Leyland's coaching staff, but one with American League managerial experience as well. "In the National League, you can't have somebody sitting on your bench who would be good enough to be a designated hitter in the American League.

"Some people last year said the White Sox won like a National League team, doing all the little things right. I don't think that was the case at all. They just pitched great and pounded the ball."

Minnesota's Torii Hunter, after the Twins' sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers this week, characterized it as "almost easy." The New York Mets, the National League's best team by most measures, were swept in Boston.

"It's a totally different game," Leyland said. "In the National League, you fill out a team with all types of players. They don't have to have a designated-hitter type per se, where American League teams can fill that spot, you know, with somebody who can mash. Sometimes, for National League teams, it's a disadvantage when their pitchers don't hit (in American League parks). Those guys are used to bunting, moving runners, then they replace them with somebody who's supposed to do what David Ortiz does. I think with the [St. Louis] Cardinals, for example, it actually works against them when their pitchers don't bat. Some of those guys -- like Jason Marquis -- can mash. If the Cardinals were an American League team, it would be like they had Scott Rolen at third base, and another hitter like Scott Rolen as the DH. That's what American League teams have a lot of times."

Detroit, despite its dazzling record, is not one of those teams. Leyland has been forced to use nine players at DH, including Dmitri Young, who in 15 starts hit .169 with no homers on his way to the disabled list. Though Marcus Thames has done a fine job as the principal designee (32 RBIs, 16 homers), the fact that you can play like a dominant team without a monster DH is just another quixotic element of the larger inconvenient truth.