Okay, so this story describes a funny situation:

KANSAS CITY — How’s this for a twist? For record-keeping purposes, Alex Rodriguez may have already hit his 500th home run.

The statistical confusion stems from the June 28 suspended game at Baltimore, which the Yankees are primed to complete Friday prior to their regularly scheduled game against the Orioles.

For all intents and purposes, Rodriguez is stuck in a time warp in his chase for 500 home runs. Thus, he could conceivably hit career homer No. 493 at Baltimore on Friday, making his homer Wednesday off Kansas City’s Gil Meche No. 500, as statistics in the suspended game will be attributed to having occurred June 28.

Here’s the timeline of this hypothetical situation, with some bizarre blank space I can’t seem to get rid of:

Date	Result
June 28	Game postponed til July 27 (Rodriguez has 492 home runs)
July 25	Rodriguez hits a home run (his 499th)
July 27	Rodriguez hits a home run, officially #493

So now his July 25th home run gets bumped up and becomes his 500th, even though chronologically it was only his 499th.

But here’s what I want to know. The story includes the observation that “Rodriguez . . . is virtually assured of becoming the youngest player to ever hit 500 home runs whenever he does accomplish the feat.” But what if he does homer in the resumption of the postponed game tonight, and thus is deemed to have retroactively hit his 500th off Meche on Wednesday (the 25th)? Will they say he hit 500 homers by whatever age he was on the 25th, even though he hit his 493rd two days later? Or will they say he did it by whatever age he is today, July 27th?

If you ask me, it ought to be by his age as of today–even if today’s home run is only his 493rd statistically, it still took him this long to hit a total of 500 home runs.

I’m sure you are relieved to finally hear me weigh in on this controversy.