To hit 600 home runs, you Kamagra have to be nothing short of a baseball legend. Those on the list include: Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Ken Griffey Jr. and Sammy Sosa. As of July 22, the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez is just two shy of breaking into the exclusive club, yet there has been little excitement surrounding his unbelievable accomplishment. The lack of discussion surrounding A-rod brings up the question of whether or not anyone cares about home run lists anymore. In the years following the steroid-era, it seems that many have become apathetic toward the home run. Maybe chicks simply no longer dig the long ball.

Of course, perhaps it’s all for the best that A-rod is approaching 600 in relative obscurity. After all, A-rod has always had the reputation of being a head case and has been involved in off-field controversy as well, making for a tumultuous career filled with plenty of ups and downs. While Barry Bonds had to deal with a media circus when he approached new home run milestones, A-rod gets to relax and worry about the division race with the Tampa Bay Rays and Boston Red Sox instead.

But while history unfolds for A-rod relatively soon, his chase for 600 also speaks to a larger trend growing around baseball. Though players were consistently hitting 50 and even 60 home runs just a half-decade ago, it doesn’t seem that 50 is in the cards for anyone this season while pitchers have been unbelievably dominant. The leader in home runs this season is Jose Bautista with 26 and he has just 66 team games left. Even with someone having a torrid final couple of months to the season, it seems that 45 or even 40 homers could easily win the home run title, which would place it more in line with the early 1990s.

For baseball purists, this trend is nothing short of an unbelievable turn of events. Instead of the high-priced big bats in the league making large market teams too difficult to compete with, teams have been able to win with young pitching and role players. Even if the Yankees win the A.L. East, which is probable at this point, supposedly moribund teams like San Diego, Cincinnati and Atlanta are all either in first place or very close as we enter the final two months of the regular season. Though baseball continues to be catered for the teams with deeper pockets, it now seems that there are more ways for smaller teams to compete now that performance-enhancing drugs no longer appear to be rampant throughout big league lineups.

As it turns out, A-rod may just be the poster child for the next era of baseball. Though fans will still continue to cheer for home runs, the pureness of baseball lists do seem forever tainted, and A-rod’s quiet approach to the 600 home run club speaks volumes to how fans and the media now view the compiling of statistics. While home runs will always sell plenty of New York Yankees tickets, the shine has certainly worn off the previously beloved lists. Though some may lament this, in a way it is a positive. Baseball fans have forever been overly obsessed with numbers to the point that baseball is often reduced to a series of algorithms and number-crunching.

The irony is that no matter how much baseball fans want to use numbers to compare the greats from the past, the numbers have never been equal anyway and have always been inherently misleading. Lou Gehrig drove in 175 runs three times in his career because he was a great player playing in an era when there simply wasn’t enough talent around him to match. Ty Cobb led the league in home runs one year with nine. Cy Young had 40 or more complete games nine times in his career; Roy Halladay, who is widely considered today’s prototypical workhorse, has never reached double-digits in terms of complete games for a season. Numbers have never been equal, yet it may have taken guys like Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez to prove it.

If anything, the lack of fanfare surrounding A-rod’s ascension to the 600 home run club is probably a blessing in disguise. Baseball fans have had a way of not being able to see the forest through the trees, instead being stuck in the middle of stats that have little to do with the thrill of the game. If the impact of home run lists is forever minimized, or at least minimized until an “untainted” player breaks into the upper echelons, baseball fans can get back to worrying full-time about how well their team is assembled and whether or not they can make a legitimate run at the World Series. The bottom line is that A-rod happened to come up in the wrong era but is still a great baseball player. He doesn’t have to join the 600 home run club for fans to know that. I hope.

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