KANSAS CITY, Mo. — They say the hardest thing in sports is to hit a round ball with a round bat, and the man who does it better than anyone else in the world cleats the dirt at Kauffman Stadium. The biggest debate in baseball is over what this means.

Miguel Cabrera has mostly stayed out of the argument. He’s paid to hit baseballs hard, so that’s what he does, over and over and over again. He says he doesn’t need another hit as long as he’s celebrating a World Series championship at the end of the month.

On a night when the Tigers clinched the American League Central, Cabrera had four hits Monday, including a line drive into the Royals’ bullpen for his 44th home run that along with a .329 average and 137 RBIs means sole possession of each Triple Crown category for the first time this season.

That leaves two more days in Kansas City to do something that hasn’t been done in 45 years.

History rides on every swing. His at-bats are also the current ground zero for baseball’s ongoing civil war between the statistical and scout communities, and this is the only shame in an otherwise beautiful baseball moment.

This is the first serious realistic push for the Triple Crown since Boston’s Carl Yastrzemski did it in 1967, a historical achievement with an inconvenient fact: Angels rookie Mike Trout has been the better baseball player this season and should win the MVP.

And here is where the whole topic runs off the tracks.

The problem with diving into this debate is that, like with too many things in our country, too many on each side are screaming over the top of the other.

Listen to Cabrera’s supporters, and Trout is a product of fancy schmancy statistics that are nerding up the game and ignoring a feat that Willie Mays, Barry Bonds, Albert Pujols and Alex Rodriguez never achieved.

Listen to Trout’s backers, and Cabrera’s case is a dinosaur, an antique from the days of black-and-white TV and transistor radio because batting average is overrated and RBIs are the most misleading stat in mainstream circulation.

Both sides miss the point, and let’s start with Cabrera. He is the best hitter in baseball, that’s close to a consensus inside the sport, and in an age where we hear too much about me-first egomaniac athletes here is one who agreed to a position switch that could’ve made him look foolish so that the team could pay someone else more money to take his spot at first base.

Whatever you think of Cabrera’s defense at third base — and it’s been bad, though not embarrassingly so — Tigers general manager Dave Dombrowski says he wouldn’t have signed Price Fielder without Cabrera’s willingness to change positions, and without Fielder it’s hard to imagine Detroit winning the AL Central.

Cabrera is a hitting savant, among the game’s best against every conceivable pitch except the curveball, which he hits merely well. He is the reigning batting champion and has led the AL in doubles, homers, RBIs, on-base percentage, slugging and total bases. He might win the Triple Crown with his worst batting average since 2009.

And to reduce Trout’s excellence to a confusing stat that virtually nobody fully understands or could calculate is misguided at best and actively ignorant at worst. The irony of the anti-sabermetric crowd compartmentalizing Trout’s incredible season to the Wins Above Replacement stat is that Trout is really an old-school thriller more in the mold of Mickey Mantle than anything that needs to be measured with a calculator.

Nobody’s won the Triple Crown in 45 years? Fine. But Trout is hitting .321 with 30 homers and 48 stolen bases and nobody’s done that since, well, ever. This is a Mays-in-his-prime type season, a bundle of baseball dominance that might take more effort to appreciate but is worth more on the field. Trout plays the best center field in baseball, and since his call-up the Angels are 82-57 — the best record in the league.

Trout can win a game with his bat, glove or legs.

That trumps Cabrera’s bat.

But it does not diminish Cabrera’s bat.

Too often it seems, taking one side means ignoring or trashing the other. Do that here, and you’re missing greatness, no matter which side of the debate you’re on. The case for one doesn’t require making a case against the other.

Monday afternoon, I talked to three players and a scout at Kauffman Stadium and asked each the same question: Trout or Cabrera?

All four went with Cabrera, who by leading the traditional stats and body of work (Trout is a rookie, and there’s actually a case that this is Cabrera’s “worst” season since 2009) would dominate in a peer vote.

Billy Butler, more qualified to talk hitting than anyone else in the Royals’ clubhouse, laid out his case for Cabrera.

“Cabrera’s just such a good hitter, the best there is,” he says.

But Trout can beat you in more ways, I say.

“Detroit’s going to the playoffs,” he says.

But the Angels have won more games, I say.

“Look,” Billy says, “at the end of the day they both deserve it. I wish one was in the National League or something. It’s a shame they can’t both win, because they both deserve it. I don’t know when we’ll see something like this again.”

Billy and I disagree on who should win the MVP, but on this last point we agree. Nobody can know whether we’ll ever see something like this again.

Which is why it’d be sad if the debate makes baseball fans miss it this time.