No, it's not going to happen. But it sure is fun to think about, don't you think?

Mark McGwire is returning to baseball this season as the St. Louis Cardinals' hitting coach. Could he also be making a cameo as a player, too?In an interview with the Contra Costa Times, Cardinals manager Tony La Russa mentioned the possibility of putting McGwire on the team's active roster on Aug. 31 so he'd be eligible to play in the postseason, if the Cardinals are still in the race.

"If we're in contention, we'll put him on the roster Aug. 31. It's a nice little dream," La Russa told the newspaper.

However unlikely the scenario might be, La Russa said it's not impossible.

"Is it likely? Probably not. I don't think it's a zero possibility. The point is, you'll see him in spring training. He won't be leaning on the batting cage chatting it up. He'll work his [butt] off, and hitters will be thrilled he's there helping them," La Russa told the newspaper.

If I might inject a few inconvenient facts:

1.McGwire is 46 years old. Next September, he'll be a few weeks from 47.

2. When McGwire was 37, he batted .187/.316/.492.

Granted, that was an off-year for him and he did still have prodigious power. He probably has prodigious power today. But can you imagine the sort of work he would have to do, to even approach being good enough to help a major league team? He would have to lose some weight, first. Then he would have to somehow rediscover the muscle memory and hand-eye coordination that made him such a devastating hitter.

Those things would be hard enough if McGwire was 41 or 42. But again, he's not. There has been, in the long history of the game, exactly one good 46-year-old hitter: Julio Franco. He was pretty good at 47, too. But, two caveats.

One, Franco never took an eight-year break from playing. And two, I'm still not completely sure that Franco was really born in 1958. I mean, I think he probably was. But his career looks so utterly bizarre that I'm just not sure.

Ah, but what if the point of McGwire wouldn't be to help the team? What if the point was help McGwire?

Stay with me here. As you know, McGwire currently has practically zero chance of being elected to the Hall of Fame. The Baseball Writers Association of America won't elect him. He's been on the ballot four times, and hasn't yet cleared 24 percent. He's not going to be elected in 2011, or in 2012. And as I wrote yesterday, the prospects for any holdovers get worse in 2013 when a parade of great candidates begins to join the list.

So if you want to help McGwire get into the Hall, what do you do?

You stop the clock.

If Mark McGwire bats just once in 2010, he'll disappear from the ballot until 2016 ... and he'll be eligible to remain on the ballot through 2026. Don't you think that by 2026, players who probably used drugs (and definitely looked silly in a Congressional hearing) might be viewed a bit more charitably than they are today? Mark McGwire hit 583 home runs and was a 12-time All-Star. Judged simply by the historical standards of the Hall of Fame, McGwire is obviously qualified.

Is Tony La Russa serious about this? No, probably not. Will McGwire actually play this year? No, he almost certainly won't.

But it's not wise to underestimate La Russa's willingness to do something for reasons that only he can begin to fathom.