TOWER GROVE — It began as an assignment and a curiousity and eventually inspired a walkabout into what-if history that would make Harry Turtledove proud.

My task was to write a story about the 500 home run club and if 500 still carried the sock, the wow that it has had since Babe Ruth became its first member on Aug. 29, 1929. My question was whether Jose Canseco should get more chatter for his Hall of Fame credentials and how steroid use was keeping him from consideration, ala his elbow-bashing teammate.

At some point those two threads spliced and became Sunday’s story about the 500 Club and Canseco’s  desire to join it so that he could assure  passage to Cooperstown.

The  hypothetical question that had to be asked was this: If Canseco had reached 500, would he have written the book, “Juiced”?  Had he not written the book, it’s possible to believe Congress would not have become involved, because they did not want to trample on the Federal investigation that resulted in Game of Shadows. Baseball then wouldn’t have had the Congressional hammer to change its drug-testing policy — twice — and create a net that snared Rafael Palmeiro, he of the famous finger point.

And so on and so on.

All the way to the vote that will be released this afternoon.

Canseco’s book caused, spurred, encouraged, inspired so much of the reporting and writing that now envelopes Mark McGwire’s Hall of Fame candidacy. The vote will be announced this afternoon and McGwire needs 75 percent to get into the Hall — he won’t — and both Bash Brothers need 5 percent to remain on the ballot. As intriguing as McGwire’s percentage is, I wonder what Canseco’s will be. If he gets less than 5 percent, that means less than about 26 of the voters checked his box.

I do not have a vote, but count me among the writers who believe “first-ballot” is a special distinction reserved for the elite of the elite. Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn are first-ballot Hall of Famers, and that may further bruise McGwire’s vote count.

Polls have suggested he’ll receive 25 percent.

The Post-Dispatch reports today it could be closer to 18 percent.

I still get the feeling it will be more than expected because answering a poll and filling out a ballot are far different exercises.

(Update: Well, I was wrong. Kudos to the pollsters, but more so to the voters sticking to their answers when faced with the blank box. McGwire gets 23.5 percent.)

The possible answer to my hypothetical inquiry on whether Canseco hitting 500 would change today’s vote was in Sunday’s article. But some other interesting things were not.

Some riffs:

TALKING WITH OUR HALL OF FAMER

Viva el Birdos, the  Cardinals blog by which all others are measured, has an excellent  Q & A with my colleague —  in the sense that Robin and Superman are “colleagues” because they’re both superheroes; like, I’m the Joe Dugan to his Lou Gehrig  – and baseball sage and gentleman reporter Rick Hummel.  

Please check it out by visiting this link.

McGWIRE STILL BRINGS THE CROWDS

According to Baseball-Reference.com’s traffic watch, McGwire’s page has the third-most unique page views on the site since Nov. 1, and he consistently ranks among the most-visited individual player pages. The top two are cemented in place: Barry Bonds and Ruth. Since Nov. 1, Ruth’s page has been visited 35,600 times, Bonds 29,900 times.

McGwire has been clicked 26,000 times.

It’s bound to grow today, which stands out as the site’s highest traffic day of the year.

McGWIRE IS UNIQUELY QUALIFIED

One of the wonderful things on the indispensable Baseball-Reference.com is its players comparisons. Whereas can you go to find out David Eckstein best compares to Bill Knickerbocker? Or Juan Encarnacion is a near mirror of Mel Hall? Those comparisons work on a 1,000-point scale and the closer to 1,000 the better the comparison. Hall scores 955 to Encarnacion.

McGwire’s closest comparable scores 833.

According to Baseball-Reference.com founder Sean Forman that makes McGwire “probably among the most unique players” in baseball. Unique is elite company, Hall of Fame company. To illustrate his point, Forman ran a program for me that compared the average scores of the top 10 most  similar players and then ranked the lowest average.

McGwire came up as the 18th “most-unique” player.

Of the 17 ahead of him, all who are eligible in the Hall.

No. 1 is Pete Rose and No. 2 is Ty Cobb because nobody comes close to the hits they put up. McGwire’s combination of home runs  and slugging percentage  don’t have an equal with  a similar amount of hits, average, at-bats, etc. Rickey Henderson is unique because of the steals. Mike Piazza  ranks just behind McGwire for obvious uniqueness.

Stan Musial,  unique in his greatness, ranks No. 8 in Forman’s tabulations of most-unique players.

500  DOES NOT EQUAL FIRST BALLOT

As discussed above, 500 home runs has not historically meant automatic first-ballot induction. It’s possible, steroids and andro and performance-enhanced suspicion aside, McGwire would not have gone in this year as voters looked to distinguish Ripken and Gwynn from their peers. Of the 15 eligible players in the 500 club, 11 went in on the first ballot. Four did not. The reports have differed on what ballots those four players went in on. Runoffs have muddied some counts and early ballots have confused others. I called Cooperstown for the official tally:

Harmon Killebrew … 4th ballot. Lowest total:  59.3, 1982.  

Jimmie Foxx* … 7th ballot. Lowest total: 6.21, 1947.

Eddie Mathews … 5th ballot. Lowest total: 32.3, 1974.

Mel Ott … 3rd ballot. Lowest total: 61.4, 1949.  

* Foxx was included on the first Hall of Fame ballot.

500 IS SAFE, 50 HAS CHANGED

This coming season four players are expected to join the 500-home run club and with a tremendous year in Detroit, Gary Sheffield could join, too. Home-run historian David Vincent provided me with a chart on 500 homers and it shows how the most players ever to reach the mark in the same season is two — and that’s happened three times before.

Mathews and Mickey Mantle in 1967.

Killebrew and Frank Robinson in 1971.

Sammy Sosa and Palmeiro in 2003.

(Aside: Alex Rodriguez will set the bar for  Albert Pujols by becoming the youngest to 500, edging Foxx by possibly doing it shortly after his 32nd birthday.  All Pujols would have to do is average about 50 homers over the next five years … )      

The big rush class coming in 2007-08 will increase the class by 25 percent and that has baseball — including members of the 500 Club — wondering if that mark has to be adjusted to 550, 600 or upward. Vincent argues that the 500 Club will remain important, saying “even if 10 more join in the next few years that’s 30 players out of 17,000 or more.”

After Sheffield and Carlos Delgado, the obvious hitters racing toward 500 are less certain. Pujols would have to echo his uncanny first six seasons to reach 500 in the next six seasons. Chipper Jones and others need to keep a pace that health or age  is ready to complicate.

“How many guys are really going to get to 500?” Vincent asked. “It’s not just hitting a lot in  a season, it’s you have to go x-number of seasons to get there. Things happen. … At one time, everybody thought Juan  Gonzalaz and Jeff  Bagwell would get there, and obviously they won’t.”

So 500 should still resonate,  today, tomorrow and for awhile. The current homer binge, however, has cost us one  milestone — 50. In the first 23 seasons after Roger Maris, three players hit 50 home runs. In the 12 seasons since the ‘94 strike, there have been 17 50-homer seasons. A dozen players have reached 50.

That ain’t what it used to be.

Maybe 55 is the new 50.

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