UNSHAKEN BY IT ALL

This wasn’t one of those “Was that an earthquake?” earthquakes.

This was a no-doubt-about-it, rocking-and-rolling, shifting-and-shaking, 5.4-magnitude earthquake that shook the Bay Area on Wednesday morning. It lasted almost 10 seconds, which in earthquake time feels more like 10 minutes.

Sammy Sosa slept through it.

“Good guys don’t hear nothing,” he said.

If you’re looking for what it will take to break Roger Maris’ single-season record of 61 home runs, the answer lies in that somewhat cryptic phrase. The Maris chase isn’t about bulging biceps or sweet swings. It’s about attitude, and Sosa has the perfect approach. If Maris can be topped, it’s Sosa who will do it.

The ground can rumble beneath him and he doesn’t feel it. Reporters can gather around and it doesn’t bother him. The pressure can mount and he won’t sense it.

Ask him if he feels any pressure with 46 home runs to date and 40 games left to play and his shoulders go up, his eyebrows dip and a quizzical look comes over his face.

“For what?” he says. “Not really. A lot of people say that, but I don’t see the kind of pressure that I have.”

Mark McGwire has treated this potential record-breaking season as a burden. He has complained that the excited crowds that come to ballparks early to watch him take batting practice make him feel like “a caged animal.” In postgame interviews, he looks as if he has just given blood, not hit a mammoth home run.

Granted, hearing the same questions over and over can get annoying. But on the list of offensive things to be asked daily, “Do you think you can break Roger Maris’ record?” ranks near the bottom. It sure beats “Did you have an affair with your intern and encourage her to lie about it?”

If McGwire, who has 47 homers, is stressed out now, how will he deal with the increasing crush as he gets closer to the record? Even easygoing Ken Griffey Jr., who has 41 homers, has some tense moments when Maris is mentioned.

But Sosa has his routine down cold. Whenever he’s asked about it, he defers to McGwire, saying he’s the man, then runs through a series of cliches about not thinking about it, concentrating on the wild-card chase, etc. It’s really not that difficult. And for Sosa it isn’t that painful.

“I think he enjoys it,” Chicago Cub teammate Mark Grace said. “This is the first time he’s ever gone through anything like this. With McGwire and Griffey, every year they set foot into spring training, they’re getting asked about it. This is Sammy’s first time through this, so I think he enjoys it.”

Sosa sure didn’t look like a man under siege before Wednesday’s game against the San Francisco Giants. He danced around while stretching. He posed for pictures with fans and autographed a ball for Giant catcher Brian Johnson.

After a few warm-up swings in the batting cage, Sosa cut loose on his second turn, sending a ball over the fence in center field, then hitting balls out to left, to right, to left again and right field one more time for the finale before exiting to a round of applause.

“I’ve been having a lot of fun,” Sosa said. “We have a good team. We have people that can compete. That’s what’s satisfying me. It’s been a long time since I had as good a time as I’m having now.”

Why shouldn’t this be fun for a man striking a near-perfect balance between potential and results, making $42.5 million over four years and meeting the expectations that come with that salary, hitting home runs at a rate matched by few who have ever played the game and contending for a postseason berth?

This is not hardship. Sosa knows hardship. He experienced it firsthand, growing up in the Dominican Republic as the fifth of seven children, trying to help his mother after his father died when Sosa was 7.

“I was a shoe-shine boy,” Sosa said. “We didn’t have food on the table, so somebody had to go out there and go get it.”

There are trying times in every job, even in the glamorous profession of baseball. For Sosa, baseball’s hard times occurred last year, when the Cubs lost their first 14 games.

“That was a tough situation for me,” he said. “That was some pressure, right there. This year has been different.”

That’s partly because Sosa has been different. He already has had two seasons in which he has hit 30 home runs and stolen 30 bases, and he uncorked a 40-home run, 100-RBI season two years ago. But never anything like this season, which has people starting to nominate him as the National League’s most valuable player.

The man who used to swing at anything remotely close to the strike zone is more selective at the plate now. As a result, he will probably top his career high of 58 walks sometime this weekend.

He had the most prolific home run month in major league history in June when he hit 20.

He probably will finish with more than 150 RBIs--but that won’t set the team record. That’s the problem with playing for the same team as Hack Wilson, who set the major league record with 190 RBIs in 1930.

And it’s quite possible he won’t end up with the home run record either.

“The odds are against him,” Grace said. “It’s just hard to do. I hope he does it. I’d love to see it. He’s still got to hit 16 more in a month and a half, and that’s not easy.”

It may not be easy, but the process of doing it shouldn’t be hard. That’s what Sosa understands.

They say the Maris chase has revitalized fan interest in baseball. It shouldn’t take a specific number. All it requires is one look at Sosa, a player who is fun to watch and who enjoys his job.

The problem with the emphasis on 61 is it implies anything less would be a failure. If Sosa comes up short, don’t expect him to lose any sleep over it.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Sosa Power

Sammy Sosa, who has 46 home runs this season, by month in 1998 (* major league record for a month):

April: 6

May: 7

June: 20*

July: 9

Aug.: 4

*Major league record