NEW YORK (Reuters) – Alex Rodriguez added his name to one of Major League Baseball's most exclusive lists when he belted his 600th career home run yesterday, joining Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron and Willie Mays among the top seven all-time sluggers.

Besides Aaron (755), Ruth (714) and Mays (660) the exclusive club also includes the recently retired Ken Griffey Jr (630), a team-mate of Rodriguez's when he broke in with the Seattle Mariners as an 18-year-old shortstop in 1994.

It is a list topped by Barry Bonds with 762 and has Sammy Sosa at 609 — two players whose home run totals shot up during baseball's so-called steroids era and whose exploits have been clouded by suspicions of doping.

A-Rod, the only infielder among those power-hitting outfielders, himself admitted before the 2009 season that he had used steroids during his seasons as a Texas Ranger (2001-2003) after signing a free-agent contract that made him the richest player ever at $25 million a year for 10 years.

Former players, much like ordinary fans of the game, are split about the authenticity of the current crop of sluggers.

"It changes the way we look at records," former Yankees first baseman Bill "Moose" Skowron, 79, told Reuters in the Yankees dugout before the recent Old Timers' Day game when asked about the effects of doping on the sport.

"This is a joke the way it is today," added Skowron, who played on seven World Series teams for the Yankees of the 1950s and '60s.

Rick Cerone, a catcher for the Yanks in seven of his 18 seasons in the majors, said doping had cast doubts on modern day hitters although he praised Rodriguez as a player.

"To be honest with you I just feel the game was tainted," he said. "Basically everybody in that era you have to look at and be suspect.

"As far as A-Rod, he came up as number one in the country. When he got to the big leagues he kept swinging and hitting. Hopefully, they won't look at him and say what would he have hit had he been totally clean."

One Hall of Famer gave this crop of sluggers their due.

"All I know is the results," said Ernie Banks, 79, the former Chicago Cubs great who slugged 512 home runs and holds the National League record for career homers by a shortstop.

"You still got to hit the ball. They did it. I don't take anything away from the younger guys. They did it."

Banks, who began his career as a shortstop before switching positions just as Rodriguez has, said he got to know the future Yankees slugger when he was invited to Texas by the Rangers when A-Rod was poised to surpass his shortstops' homer mark.

"He knows the science of hitting.

"He's studied and practiced the science of hitting," twice NL MVP Banks told Reuters in a telephone interview, relating a visit with A-Rod by the batting cage at 2008 All-Star game at Yankee Stadium.

"Hit the ball to right field, do this. Hit the ball centre do that. Hit the ball to left do this, do that," Banks said about how A-Rod narrated his approach to hitting the baseball.

Barrel-chested Ruth, the game's first great home run hitter, revolutionised the sport with the majesty and frequency of his 'Ruthian' blasts.

Said former Yankees outfielder Roy White: "Babe Ruth outhomered entire teams. There's been nobody in that category, to put it in perspective.

"But A-Rod would hit homers in any era."