With six more home runs, Alex Rodriguez will become the seventh player in baseball history to reach 600. So why does it seem like nobody cares?

Rodriguez's admission last year that he used performance-enhancing drugs surely has something to do with it. The 156 home runs he hit during his three years in Texas may as well be placed on a separate list stamped with a giant asterisk.

If and when A-Rod hits No. 763 to move past Barry Bonds - and based on the nagging injuries and lack of home run power he's shown for most of this season, that can no longer be considered a lock - it may very well conclude the most joyless pursuit of a major milestone in sports history.

When Bonds chased down Hank Aaron in 2007, there was plenty of speculation that he had injected himself with enough drugs to make a professional wrestler blush. But unlike Rodriguez, Bonds never admitted to anything.

The home fans in San Francisco continued to idolize Bonds in a way the New York fans have never taken to Rodriguez, turning every game into a celebration of San Francisco's favorite son.

Will fans be able to put A-Rod's drug history aside and celebrate his accomplishments? Based on the lack of interest in his pursuit of 600, it's hard to imagine his quest for 763 being anything other than forced and robotic.

"The jury is out," Rodriguez said. "People are going to have their own opinion. I can't do anything about that."

When the Yankees inked Rodriguez to the 10-year, $275 million pact that will keep him in pinstripes for the rest of his career, they were clearly enamored with the idea of watching him move up the sport's all-time home run chart.

An organization that has historically frowned upon bestowing individual performance bonuses on its players put $30 million worth of them into A-Rod's contract, $6 million each for tying Willie Mays, Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron and Bonds on the all-time list, then another $6 million for hitting No. 763 to become baseball's home run king.

As is typically the case with such arrangements, the inspiration for the deal was the bottom line. The marketing opportunities that would come with A-Rod's pursuit of the record would be plentiful, as would be the ticket sales that would accompany Rodriguez's chase to become the "clean" home run champion.

That, of course, will never happen.

A-Rod may one day move past Bonds on the home run list, but the nationwide interest in his chase won't be what most people believed it would be as recently as 18 months ago.

"Any marketing around the home runs almost becomes a joke," said Darren Rovell, CNBC's sports business analyst. "The people that would have bought that shirt, hat or autographed ball may not buy it now. It's going to be really hard to market this. This can't be what the Yankees bargained for."