Mark McGwire's retirement wasn't all that much of a surprise, given that his body has been telling him to knock it off for more than a year now.

	Mark McGwire's swing didn't yield many hits in '01, but did produce 29 home runs.

But here comes the hard part -- believing that this is really retirement.

Now we don't wish to doubt McGwire's symptomology, even though as sportswriters we know more about medicine than most doctors. Why would a man submit to a batting average below .200 if he didn't have to, right?

Nor do we wish to doubt his word, even though he has had several sea changes in his career -- from union activist to union hesitant, from wanting to leave Oakland to be closer to his children to playing in St. Louis. Hey, circumstances change, and as sportswriters we know that, too.

But the history of sporting retirements is so spotty, so unconvincing, that as sportswriters we reserve the right to be more comprehensively convinced.

After all, John L. Sullivan just signed to fight Rocky Marciano, with the winner to meet Larry Holmes next Halloween.

Baseball players have been more faithful to the retirement ideal than others, that much is true. Perhaps it is because they can play longer than most other athletes and can more fully exorcise all their competitive demons. Perhaps it is because they are less likely to go through all their money than most boxers, who tend to be managed by men with hooded masks and felt shoes, the better to go through the fighter's pockets with while he's sparring.

But we can't assume that McGwire won't get the itch again, especially since he isn't going out on his own terms, no matter how elegantly worded his statement might be.

His terms, we are quite sure, did not include being a near automatic out on a team that was in most ways no worse than the Arizona Diamondbacks. His terms would have run more along the lines of giving Barry Bonds a more spirited run for his home run record.

But he plainly hit a wall, and face first at that, choosing strangely enough to tell Rich Eisen before he told his employers.

Other than irritating the Cardinals with his chosen avenue of dissemination, McGwire has left the team with a slight quandary -- whether to make a run at Jason Giambi, or to make a psychotic, push-it-in-with-both-hands run at Jason Giambi.

The Cardinals are the Midwest baseball Vatican we have always declared them to be, but it is more accurately the Oakland A's graduate school. With general manager Walt Jocketty, manager Tony La Russa and a coaching staff largely held over from his Oakland days, plus McGwire, the lure of Giambi is clear, and expensive.

Put another way, St. Louis is the new prohibitive favorite in the Giambi sweepstakes, no matter how much money George Steinbrenner wants to throw at the Oakland first baseman.

That is, if McGwire gives Giambi the kind of hard sell for Missouri most people expect of him.

And that gets back to the matter of how sure McGwire is about calling it a day.

If this is a clean retirement, a la Ripken and Gwynn, then no harm, no foul. But if it's more along the lines of Albert Belle -- game called by wonky leg -- then it would be behoove us to tread somewhat more carefully about McGwire's retirement.

He has nothing left to prove, of course, but he may wake up one day and conclude that he has something more to do -- get to 600 homers, or fill his nostrils with a pennant race one more time, or just enjoy the thigh-slapping, commode-hugging hilarity of the clubhouse.

In that case, whatever he told Eisen, La Russa or Don Fehr becomes inoperative, and he comes back -- maybe in 2002, maybe even 2003, or whenever the Vicksburg, Miss., Expos win the National League Southeast.

Point is, we see Michael Jordan, and we know never to say never, even when never is all we see.

We are sportswriters, after all. We can see the future, even when it isn't there.

Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Chronicle is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.