Falling short of 500 home runs will hurt Fred McGriff's Hall of Fame chances. Rick Stewart/Getty Images

Out of work Fred McGriff, released July 18 by Tampa Bay, may never hit the seven home runs he needs to get to 500. You can blame the games he lost in his prime to the 1994-95 strike, or you can argue that he simply was a cut below the 500 Homer Club. Barring another chance, though, McGriff will join Lou Gehrig, who also hit 493 home runs, as the players who came closest to joining the club without getting inside the velvet ropes.

Such has been McGriff's prolific, yet understated, career. McGriff's Hall of Fame chances should not depend on whether he hits seven more home runs as a hanging-on player at age 40. A player earns entry to the Hall largely on a sustained prime in which he is among the very best as compared to his peers. Here McGriff has a very strong argument.

• Every year from 1988 through 1994, McGriff finished among the top four in home runs and top five in OPS -- with what now seem to be antiquated numbers. (He never hit more than 37 homers.)

• He made the All-Star team five times, though he was left off the year he led the AL in home runs and OPS (1989), the year he was second in times reaching base (1990) and the year he finished fourth in MVP voting (1993).

• He hit .303 with 10 homers in 188 postseason at-bats, compiling an impressive .917 OPS.

I'm not ready to decide today if McGriff gets my Hall of Fame vote or not. He is a classic borderline candidate, more similar to Willie Stargell and Willie McCovey (in) and Dwight Evans, Andre Dawson and Dave Parker (out) than to Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx or Willie Mays.

McGriff deserves serious consideration, and the five years from his retirement to his eligibility will help put his career into proper perspective. Whether he hit 500 home runs is irrelevant to me. (The so-called "magic number" is 462, anyway; everyone with more than Jose Canseco's total is a Hall of Famer.)

Still, the public, and part of the Hall electorate, like the cleanliness of round numbers. And so that got me thinking: Are there other Fred McGriffs out there? What other players came tantalizingly close to milestone numbers, and why did they fall short?

Such thinking led to this list. I call it The Crooked Number Club. Admittedly, some of the categories are less prestigious than others. But in every case, these players retired with the glory of round numbers just out of their reach.

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500 homers: Gehrig and McGriff (493). A deadly illness stopped Gehrig. McGriff simply stopped hitting. He managed two home runs in 72 at-bats for the Rays this season.

3,000 hits: Sam Rice (2,987). He hit .293 at age 44 with the 1934 Indians, but still fell 13 short of 3,000. Blame it on the start of his career, not the finish. Rice was signed as a pitcher with the Senators and had only 62 career hits by the time he was 27. The Rod Carew of his day, the singles hitter had to wait until 1963, when he was 73 years old, to be selected by the Veterans Committee for the Hall of Fame.

1,500 RBI: Dave Parker (1,493 RBI). Only two of the 40 1,500-RBI men entering this season face tough odds when it comes to Cooperstown: Andre Dawson and Harold Baines. Parker drove in 59 runs in his final season with the Angels and Blue Jays. He was a 40-year-old DH who was given 502 at-bats despite a woeful .288 OBP. He had his chances. Draw your own conclusions about how much drugs influenced his career.

500 doubles: Rusty Staub (499). The 500-double club may not be nearly as prestigious as the 500-homer club, but among its 40 members only Al Oliver, Parker, Mark Grace, Craig Biggio and Andre Dawson may not get to the Hall. (Biggio stands a decent chance, and I'm setting aside the ineligible Pete Rose). Staub was 41 when he managed three doubles for the Mets in 1985, his last season. Remarkably, the premier pinch hitter posted a .400 OBP that year. A professional hitter, he squeezed every ounce out of his career.

4,000 total bases: Carlton Fisk (3,999). Of the 62 players with 4,000 total bases entering this year, only eight have not been deemed Hall of Fame material: Andres Galarraga, Oliver, Jim Rice, Staub, Dwight Evans, Vada Pinson, Parker and Dawson. Fisk easily made it to the Hall without that last base.

300 wins: Bobby Mathews (297). Pitching in the Paleozoic Era of baseball (1871-1887), Mathews started 70 games and completed 69 of them -- in one season. He was 29-38 that year. For anyone who pitched in anything that resembles the modern game, you have to go to Tommy John (288), who lost time but who also was better off because of his eponymous elbow surgery. John was 46 when the 1989 Yankees gave him 10 starts. He was 2-7 with a 5.80 with 18 strikeouts. Clearly, he was done.

2,000 strikeouts: Billy Pierce (1,999). The little lefty ranks 60th on the all-time list. He finished his career as a reliever in 1964, getting 29 punchouts in 49 innings. He may have lacked that one last, milestone whiff, but he could still get people out. Pierce was 3-0 with a 2.20 ERA in his last year in baseball.

4,000 innings: Dennis Martinez (3,999 2/3). Perhaps the best pitcher never to win 20, Martinez fell one out short of the 4,000-inning milestone, though it has little Hall of Fame relevance. Workhorses don't command that kind of respect. Martinez ranks 37th in innings. Nine of the pitchers ahead of him also are not in the Hall, nor likely to get in: Frank Tanana, Jim McCormick, Gus Weyhing, Jack Powell, Jim Kaat, Tony Mullane, John, Mathews and Bert Blyleven.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Tom Verducci covers baseball for the magazine and is a regular contributor to SI.com.