Junior Patrol

He is two years behind where he might have been, chasing 500 home runs instead of 600, but being healthy enough to chase anything is reward in itself.

“I got hurt playing hard,” Ken Griffey Jr. is saying. “I kept getting hurt playing hard, and I can’t worry about what might have been.

“I mean, it’s not like I was doing something else and got hurt. It’s not like I disappeared or went on vacation.

“I simply couldn’t play, and if some fans and some people got frustrated with that and with me, think how I felt.

“This is my life, a job I still love, and there were times in the last couple of years that I was out-and-out miserable. Now I’m trying to make other people miserable, but I have to stay healthy to do it, and I have to play the only way I know how to play. If that means running into a wall or diving for a ball, that’s what I’m going to do.

“Otherwise, I might as well go home.”

The resurgent center fielder of the Cincinnati Reds is saying some of this to a group of reporters in the visiting clubhouse at Network Associates Coliseum on Monday after saying some of it privately when his team was in Los Angeles recently.

Now, two home runs shy of becoming the 17th player to hit 500, there is nothing private about a pursuit he tries to minimize while admitting he left 22 tickets for family and friends who came here for the interleague opener with the Oakland Athletics in the remodeled park where he collected his first major league hit as a member of the Seattle Mariners in 1989.

Nor is there any question that at 34, having missed 252 games and been on the disabled list five times in the last three of his four years with the hometown Reds, his scarred body burdened with so much surgical steel he is a challenge to airport security, that he can still do many of the wondrous things he could in ’89 when he was the teenage natural.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt but that he came into this season with the goal of proving he’s still Ken Griffey Jr., and I don’t think anyone can doubt that’s who he is,” teammate Sean Casey said.

“He’s still a guy who works hard, expects a lot of himself and can flat out take over a game.”

Well, not all games are the same.

After hitting two home runs Sunday to pull within two of 500 and sustain a streak in which he had hit nine in 14 games, Griffey was foiled by Mark Mulder as the A’s romped, 13-2, in the opener of a series in which he must cope with another renowned left-hander, Barry Zito, tonight.

At this point, however, he and his career are alive and well again -- and 500 should come sooner than later.

After all, Griffey is back on a familiar course.

He is third among National League outfielders in All-Star voting, having failed to appear in the midsummer game since 1999, and is tied for the league lead in home runs at 17, on pace to hit 48 and drive in 134 runs.

Where he would be on the all-time home run and RBI ladders had it not been for the injuries can be debated, but it’s safe to say -- as Hank Aaron’s choice to break his home run record -- he would be shadowing Barry Bonds and either close to 600 or already over it.

Consider that he hit 40 homers when he went home to Cincinnati in 2000 and averaged almost 50 in the five seasons before 2001. Had he remained healthy over the ensuing three seasons and maintained that average instead of hitting a total of only 43, he would now have about 107 more.

Of course, the often cryptic Griffey refuses to live in the future or the past, the injuries merely underscoring the way he was raised in a baseball home.

“I haven’t hit [No. 500], so I don’t know how I’ll feel about it,” he said. “I’m trying to take one pitch at a time and not get ahead of myself.

“I try to take what I do in stride. People say ‘Why don’t you feel this way or that way,’ but I try not to get too high or too low. My dad told me, ‘Don’t believe how good you are when people tell you and don’t believe how bad you think you are.’ In my house, you never knew if he went four for four or zero for four.”

His dad, of course, is the senior Ken Griffey, who won two World Series rings with the Reds and uses them as a shining reminder to his son that winning is more important than any statistic.

No one, of course, would argue in the long term, but 500 is 500, and the senior Griffey and his wife, Bertie, are in Oakland to see their son’s quest, and so is Junior’s wife, Melissa, and their three children.

What they saw Monday night was an offensive outburst by Oakland that buried the surprising leaders of the National League Central and prompted Cincinnati Manager Dave Miley to give his center fielder a rest after three at-bats, in which he singled once and grounded out twice.

Neither the possibility of a Griffey milestone nor an interleague matchup devoid of any historic or geographic significance got the turnstiles purring. A crowd of only 14,686 saw the Reds absorb a defeat of the type apt to create doubts about their 34-23 record.

In fact, no one can say for sure that the frugal Reds -- should they drop out of a race in which they were never expected to participate -- will retain Griffey.

He has more than four years left on a nine-year, $116.5-million contract, and it was only two years ago that the Reds completed a trade sending him to the San Diego Padres only to have Phil Nevin refuse to waive his no-trade clause.

Griffey doesn’t have such a clause, and General Manager Dan O’Brien is noncommittal.

For now, his center fielder is healthy in more ways than one, marching toward a milestone that had once been taken for granted and seemingly back in the company of Alex Rodriguez, Vladimir Guerrero, Albert Pujols and Bonds as baseball’s best.

If he had once been alone as baseball’s best, he has recovered from the misery and loves the company.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Two to Go

Ken Griffey Jr. needs two home runs to reach 500. Active home run leaders through Monday

*--* Barry Bonds 674 Sammy Sosa 549 Rafael Palmeiro 535 Ken Griffey Jr. 498 Fred McGriff 492 Juan Gonzalez 434 Frank Thomas 430 Jeff Bagwell 428 Jim Thome 395 Gary Sheffield 387 Mike Piazza 371 Manny Ramirez 362

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