Sierra Still Streaking and Still Suffering : Baseball: Ranger’s hitting streak reaches 18 games despite injuries, but he’s more concerned with making All-Star team.

Ruben Sierra was limping around Anaheim Stadium Sunday afternoon. Two doubles, a single and a run scored helped the Texas Rangers beat the Angels, 2-1, and extended Sierra’s hitting streak to 18 games, but it didn’t make his sore leg feel any better.

In the past month, a cyst in his knee, an achy tendon behind the knee and a strained hamstring--all on the right leg--have conspired to slow Sierra to a crawl.

Not that anyone among the 40,542 seemed to notice Sunday because Sierra continued to spray the ball to all fields. But also because most of the country doesn’t know who the heck Sierra is, beyond the silly nickname that guy on ESPN has hung on him. And, really, people are probably more familiar with ESPN’s Chris (Ethel Merman) Berman than Ruben (High) Sierra.

“I’ve been in baseball far longer than Ken Griffey Jr. and he’s got more fans than I’ve got,” Sierra said.

More votes in the All-Star game balloting, too.

At last glance, Griffey was approaching a million votes, tops among American League outfielders, while Sierra was in seventh place with fewer than 300,000 votes.

It’s one of the pitfalls of playing in the major leagues’ backwaters--Arlington, Tex. If Sierra played in New York or Chicago or even Anaheim, it might be a different story.

Suffice to say the All-Star game is a big deal to Sierra. It’s the main reason he’s still playing despite running in a painful-looking trot.

“It’s going to be the same if I don’t stop playing,” Sierra said. “It’s my wheel (leg). It doesn’t let me run. (But) I don’t want to come out now. I want to go to the All-Star game and play a couple of innings.”

Someone mentioned his 18-game hitting streak. Surely, he won’t come out of the lineup until it ends, right?

Nope. Hitting streaks come and go, he said. Playing in the All-Star game is the No. 1 objective for Sierra, whose only appearance came in the 1989 game at Anaheim Stadium.

“Some day, somebody is going to stop me and I’ll have to start again,” he said. “You can’t beat that record (Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game streak), you know. There’s a lot of tough pitching in major league baseball for a 50- or 60-game hitting streak.”

Still, Sierra’s 18-game streak has been noteworthy. It’s the longest in the AL this year and only one game away from tying the major league-leading streak of San Francisco’s Willie McGee.

It has also moved Sierra near the league leaders in batting average (third at .337), hits (second at 99) and RBIs (third at 56).

The numbers figure to add up to a spot as a reserve for the All-Star game July 9 at Toronto.

“I’ve got to play hard, play to win,” Sierra said. “I don’t want to think about anything else.”

He would especially like to forget that nagging pain in his right leg.

“I don’t know what it is,” he said. “There’s something in the muscle and I can’t run hard and steal bases. All I can do is hit the ball and stop at first base . . . or hit doubles.”

Sunday, he was fortunate that he didn’t have to run fast.

In the first inning, he lined a shot off Angel starter Kirk McCaskill into the gap in left-center field and jogged into second base. In the fourth, he hammered a McCaskill pitch down the left-field line for another double. He later scored what proved to be the winning run.

After a groundout in the sixth, Sierra added a single to center off reliever Floyd Bannister.