TOUGH ACT TO FOLLOW

It’s mid-May, only starting to heat up. Can Sammy Sosa be far behind?

“Every year it’s the same story,” he was saying Monday night at Dodger Stadium. “Every April. I’m like the weather. When it’s cold, I’m cold. When it’s hot, I’m hot.”

The best thing about this April for the Chicago Cub right fielder was that he didn’t succumb to an injury wave that already forced his team to use the disabled list nine times, with six pitchers on it at one point.

“We’ve been crushed by injuries,” first baseman Mark Grace said. “We’re basically trying to keep our head above water until we get some of our people back. To be around .500, I feel like we’re doing OK.”

The Cubs travel with a lot of baggage.

They were the National League’s wild-card representative last year and are trying to win 90 games in two consecutive seasons for the first time since 1930, trying to reach the postseason in two consecutive seasons for the first time since 1908, when they won their last World Series title.

They came to Los Angeles with a 14-14 record. Doing OK amid the injuries, which is about how their renowned right fielder described his start--after a season for the ages.

“I’m not satisfied with my swing right now,” Sosa said. “I know I can do everything better, but I’ll survive. I know there’s no way in the world I can hit a home run every time, so I’m just trying to put the ball in play, get a base hit. I’m not a one-week or two-week player. I understand it’s a long season, and I know how to get through it. I’ll be there in October.”

This is not to say Sosa is expecting a repeat of a season in which it only seemed as if he and Mark McGwire were hitting a home run every time up.

McGwire hit 70, Sosa 66.

The Great Home Run Race didn’t save baseball, but it pumped new life into it.

It also changed the landscape, the perception of what composes an outstanding season.

Have McGwire and Sosa failed if they hit only 30 or 40 or 50 home runs this year?

“How long did that record last?” Cub closer Rod Beck said of the 37 years between the 61 homers by Roger Maris and the record binge by McGwire and Sosa. “There’s too much pressure to expect another 60. If Sammy hits 40 and drives in 120, he’ll have had a heck of a year. Thirty and 100 wouldn’t be bad either.”

Sosa drove in 158 runs last year, the fourth-highest total in NL history, and won the league’s most-valuable-player award.

“Last year was a season nobody will forget,” he said, “but I cannot bring that into 1999. I cannot live in the past. I know I’ll have another great year because I believe in myself, but I think that if you hit 30 home runs and drive in 100 runs at the major league level, you’ve had a great year. I don’t agree with people who say that if I don’t hit 40 or 50 or 60 again, I won’t have had a great year.”

Sosa can’t be blamed if he is merely trying to provide some reality to the unreal expectations. He arrived with seven home runs, three in his last five games--rising with the mercury.

Of his 280 career homers entering the Dodger series, only 32 had been hit in April.

Last year, he hit six in April, seven in May and exploded with 20 in June. The 66 were 26 more than he hit in any previous season.

“Sammy is a finely tuned machine,” General Manager Ed Lynch said in the Cub clubhouse Monday night. “If any part of the machine is off a little, it isn’t going to function quite as smoothly. But Sammy is a streaky hitter and he’ll find his groove. He launched himself into national prominence with those 20 homers in June.

“More than anything, you know what you’ll get with him. His attitude is so good. He works so hard. He doesn’t pout. He’s out there every day. It’s amazing how many guys in baseball don’t give you that. And last year, as good as he was on the field, he was even better off it. He had the patience of a saint.”

To repeat as the wild card out of an improved and competitive Central Division, the Cubs also need all parts of the machine in operating order, and it isn’t going to happen.

Rookie phenom Kerry Wood is out for the year after reconstructive elbow surgery, devastating news for a team that changed pitchers 449 times in 1998 and has been struggling with a patchwork rotation amid the injuries.

In coming off the wild card, management decided to maintain the status quo, making only minor alterations.

With every member of the regular lineup except shortstop Jose Hernandez 30 or older (Hernandez turns 30 July 14), and the nucleus eligible for free agency--except Sosa, Beck and Henry Rodriguez--this could be a last chance for this group.

“I don’t think we look on it as make or break,” Beck said, “but to keep together we’re going to have to show we deserve to be kept together.”

There has been some criticism of Cub ownership for failing to build on the wild-card momentum, but Grace said: “One of two things generally happens after a team reaches the playoffs. It’s dismantled, or management brings in a couple impact players trying to take it another step. I’m thankful they’ve given this same group another run, but I might imagine it’s a swan song. It’s impossible to sign back 15 guys.”

Will it be impossible for Sosa to repeat his 1998 success? A hot topic in more ways than one.