One of the stars on my son’s little league team has an older brother who plays too. That’s no coincidence, according to a study cited by The New York Times on Monday. Two researchers mined that rich data source – baseball stats – for a new look in sibling behavior. Here’s what they found:

In the current issue of Personality and Social Psychology Review, Frank J. Sulloway and Richard L. Zweigenhaft went digging for evidence of siblings behaving differently in the vast database of baseball statistics. Given how younger siblings have been shown to take more risks than their older counterparts — perhaps originally to fight for food, now for parental attention — Drs. Sulloway and Zweigenhaft examined whether the phenomenon might persist to the point that baseball-playing brothers would try to steal bases at significantly different rates.

In fact they did: For more than 90 percent of sibling pairs who had played in the major leagues throughout baseball’s long recorded history, including Joe and Dom DiMaggio and Cal and Billy Ripken, the younger brother (regardless of overall talent) tried to steal more often than his older brother. The story includes a great photo of Dom DiMaggio, who played for the Red Sox and his brother Joe, who played for the Yankees. Other more recent Sox with baseball siblings include J.D. Drew, who has two brothers – one active and one retired. Former Sox ace Pedro Martinez is a younger MLB brother and there are the pitching Papelbons — Red Sox closer Jonathan has two brothers in the minors.

The researchers say their findings will have little impact on the game. But just in case, Bill James take note. James is the staff statistician for the Sox and often cited as a key factor in the 2004 Red Sox World Series win.

This post in itself will likely act as a survey. How many Red Sox fans read NNB? Those who do will surely come up with some other brothers. And, the study raises two important questions:

1. Was then-Yankee Aaron Boone was thinking of his big brother when he hit that 11th inning walk-off home run that knocked the Sox out of the 2003 World Series? Wait – wasn’t that younger brother Martinez pitching? Nope, they had put Tim Wakefield in by then.

2. Maybe I should have had more kids. My son’s 9-0 team got shut out last night.