The 600th home run in the career of Sammy Sosa last week was met with an odd amount of indifference for a milestone that only Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Barry Bonds and Willie Mays had obtained. Blame it on more fallout from the Steroid Era, as the home run prompted the usual Is-he-a-Hall-of-Famer? chatter. (Verdict: none, the jury is still out on this one.)
But you can also explain away the rather muted response on milestone saturation. It seems every week someone is nearing an important, fat, round number. A funny thing happened to players through the 1990s: Not only did many of them get extremely large, but many of them also played for a very long time. The explosion of money, not just home runs and training regimens, may have contributed. Why walk away or lose interest with many millions of dollars still on the table?
Now we've reached the point where in the same season 600 home runs may be surpassed twice and 500 home runs four times and none of them are even the biggest fish hooked. What does it all mean any more? To help you sort through it, here is your guide to the milestones. These are the top nine upcoming milestones, ranked in order of importance and difficulty -- call it the wow factor -- and why they matter, or not.
1) Barry Bonds: 756 home runs
How many needed: 7
Wow factor: 10
Why it's a big deal: They don't get any bigger. It's the Hope Diamond, the, uh, Babe Ruth of sports records. Since Ruth set the record in 1921 the career home run mark has been reset just once, by Aaron 33 years ago. It's the greatest record in sports and we're getting only the second look in 86 years at it being eclipsed.
What's missing: Authenticity. Bonds will have the most home runs, but he can never be king. Commissioner Bud Selig doesn't want to be there (he hasn't decided what to do about it yet), Aaron will not be there and fans on the road to 756 are showering Bonds with virulent ridicule that would shame anyone capable of such emotion.
2) Roger Clemens: 350 wins
How many needed: 1
Wow factor: 9
Why it's a big deal: No one under the age of 79 has seen more than one 350th victory for a pitcher. Clemens will be the eighth pitcher to reach 350 wins. The others, with the dates of their 350th win in ascending order, are Pud Galvin (1891), Cy Young (1902), Kid Nichols (1904), Christy Mathewson (1914), Walter Johnson (1923), Pete Alexander (1928) and Warren Spahn (1963). Here's another way to look at it: Clemens will be the only man born in the past 86 years to win 350 games.
What's missing: A pennant race. Clemens pitching middle relief on a 1-5 road trip for a losing team? Clemens unable to get out of the fifth inning against the Colorado Rockies? We waited 44 years for this?
3) Alex Rodriguez: 500 home runs
How many needed: 8
Wow factor: 9
Why it's a big deal: The subtext of Bonds chasing Aaron is that A-Rod is chasing Bonds. Bonds won't so much own the home run record as he will be subletting it. Say Rodriguez (28 homers in 73 games) cools off slightly and hits another 28 home runs this year. That would leave him with 520 home runs at age 32. Now say his home run rate over the next eight years slows by 25 percent over what it was the previous eight years. That means when A-Rod is 40 years old he will have 799 home runs.
What's missing: A World Series ring. But don't hold that against him. Because Rodriguez hasn't played on a world championship team doesn't mean that he can't -- even if it means he leaves New York to continue the quest.
4) Ken Griffey Jr.: 600 home runs
How many needed: 16.
Wow factor: 8
Why it's a big deal: Old-school charm. Griffey generally is regarded as the rare slugger who avoided the taint of the Steroid Hero. His numbers have the legitimacy that many of his contemporaries never will enjoy. Griffey will be the sixth member of the 600 club.
What's missing: Hundreds of games in Junior's career. From 2001 to '06, a fragile Griffey sat out 418 games, or 43 percent of the schedule over a six-year period. Let's assume Griffey had remained relatively healthy -- conservatively, say he played in three-quarters of those games he missed. That's 314 additional games. And say he hit home runs at the same rate in those virtual games as he did in the ones in which he actually played. Griffey would be sitting on 655 today.
