"The talk about Jim Thome's quest for 600 career home runs is that nobody's talking about it. And all this talk about the lack of talk seems to center around a single premise -- that Thome, who has never been linked to the use of performance-enhancing drugs, is the unwitting victim of a steroid era that has cheapened his impending milestone. Once he gets around to hitting two more home runs, Thome will become just the eighth member of the 600 Club. And for all we know in this era of diminished offensive output, he might well be one of the last. If nothing else, he'll be the last for several years. Manny Ramirez is gone. Albert Pujols, sitting on 435 homers at age 31, obviously has the best shot of any active player, but he probably won't reach even 500 until 2013, so let's not get too far ahead of ourselves just yet. Prince Fielder and Miguel Cabrera turned 27 and 28, respectively, earlier this year and both have more than 200, so, they have a fighting chance. But this stuff is impossible to project. All we can say for certain is that Thome is about to join one of the game's most exclusive clubs and the chase is getting about as much attention as, say, Michael Young's quest for 2,000 hits. Which is to say, not much at all. The only attention Thome is getting comes from articles like the one you're reading right now, pointing out the lack of attention. Invariably, they all tend to point to the PED perspective as the reason why Thome is receiving so little fanfare in what has become a quiet quest."