"Gary Sheffield was chopping the ball foul, spraying it hard everywhere, his swing zoning right in on Mitch Stetter's slow inside stuff and biorhythms. The home plate umpire, Derryl Cousins, kept pulling these specially marked balls out of his pocket, putting them in play, and you just knew the explosion was coming.

Then it arrived, a sharp liner off a fat 3-2 pitch that traveled 385 feet and jetted over the left-field wall in no time at all, into the hands of Chris Matcovich, a 22-year-old fan from Suffern. Matcovich, an accommodating sort, would soon trade the treasure right back to the slugger nearly as quickly as it had flown to him, for a handful of signed jerseys.

Sheffield rounded the bases for career homer No. 500 and now there was only the question of how he would be treated by the crowd, which was really not much of a puzzle. All is forgotten and forgiven when a player ties the game with a leadoff homer in the seventh, turns things around for a 5-4 victory over Milwaukee just as things are getting a little desperate for the Mets.

Sheffield crossed the plate and raised hands to the sky. He got a big bear hug from Jose Reyes, and the fans were already on their feet cheering, demanding the first curtain call in Citi Field history. Maybe this wasn't a homegrown star, maybe Sheffield had hit 134 homers for the hated Yankees and Braves, and maybe this was his very first hit as a Met. But you don't turn your back on history, even if it is a bit tainted.

"Everything happens for a reason," Sheffield would say. "There's a reason I hit 19 homers instead of 20 last year. Doing it on the biggest stage, it makes it that much more special to me." Then he talked a bit piously about "a higher purpose" and "a bigger reason."

Sheffield is only the 25th player to enter the 500 Club, the fourth oldest, yet his accomplishment deserves one of the larger asterisks handed out in the steroid era. His election to the Hall of Fame is far from assured, despite this statistical feat. Sheffield has admitted to using a performance-enhancing cream back in 2001 while claiming he had no idea at the time about its chemical makeup or potency. He is named in the Mitchell Report."