WEEK SEVEN

HOME RUN CLUBS: This week Sammy Sosa became the 33rd member of 400 homer club, while Barry Bonds passed Ott, Mathews and Banks, hitting seven homers, giving him 22 homers on the season and 516 for his career. On Saturday, Bonds became the sixth player this year to hit three homers in a game in 2001, then followed that on Sunday with two more. His five homers in two games and six in three games both tie records and during his blazing hot streak Bonds has hit 21 homers in 33 games. Next on the homer list are Willie McCovey and Ted Williams, who are tied for 11th, with 521. 19 more homers and Bonds is in sole possession of 10th place; Jimmie Foxx is there now with 534. Mantle is right ahead of that with 536.

And what of Ken Griffey? He's on the DL, of course, but all this talk about all-time lists reminded me of how many times in the past few years I've heard that Griffey is on track to break Hank Aaron's home run record. Going into this season, the 31-year-old Griffey had 12 major leagues seasons under his belt and had hit 438 homers, an average of 36 1/2 per year. He will fall off the pace this year, although he may return later in the season. He may yet break Aaron's record, but the odds have dropped. My point is not whether or not Griffey will break the record, but what an incredible history of consistency the Hammer put together. Except for his final year -- 1976, when he was 43 -- he never played in less than 100 games a season. He hit 755 homers in 23 years, an average of just under 33 per year--and that includes 12 and 10 homer years in '75 and '76, when he had already broken Ruth's record. Through the 1974 season, when he eclipsed the Babe, Hank averaged an incredible 35 homers every year for 21 years.

The day after Bonds hit three homers, Boston catcher Jason Varitek became the seventh player to hit three homers in a game this year. Varitek is not your typical home run hitter, in fact he hit more long flies Sunday than he had the entire season to this point; he has jsut five on the year. Elsewhere, Milwaukee's veteran outfielder Devon White became the fourth major leaguer ever to grand slam three times in one month when he hit his third bases-loaded homer in 10 days on Sunday.

All these homers are very interesting, but they show once again that you need more than homers to win ball games. The Giants won on Saturday when Bonds had his three homer game, but lost on Sunday when he hit two. Varitek led the Red Sox to their third victory of the week, but the Brewers lost on Sunday when Devo hit his third May grand slam. Which leads us to the issue of which teams are hot and which are not as we head into the end of May.

DIVISIONAL RACES. Even though Seattle remains hot, they became the last team in the majors to have double digits in both wins and losses when they lost their 10th game of the season on Friday. They lost again on Saturday, and ended up going 4-2 for the week. Not bad, but this week the Oakland A's let the baseball world know they are back when they swept first the Yankees, then the White Sox. They went 6-0 on the week, taking over second place in the AL West with a 21-22 record. Not exactly what was expected of the A's when the season started, but if you consider they started 2-10, their 19-12 record since then looks more like what was predicted for them.

Actually, the sour start might have been the best thing that could have happened to the A's. They are a young club, and most of them were on the relatively successful clubs of '99 and 2000. Ace Tim Hudson, for instance, was 11-2 and 20-6 in those two seasons, his first. He got off to an awful start, struggled in his next few outings, and now is pitching the way he should be. The same is true of Mark Mulder and Barry Zito. They know now what it's like to crawl back, and now they know what it feels like to celebrate just being within a game of .500. Many see Hudson, Mulder and Zito as the next great triumvirate of pitchers in the Maddux/Glavine/Smoltz mold. Factor in Miguel Tejada, Terrence Long, Eric Chavez, Frank Menechino and Adam Piatt, and you knew there was too much talent for this team to stay in the doldrums for long.

Other notes on the A's: Catcher Ramon Hernandez is the type of player you rarely hear about. He doesn't put up the big offensive numbers, but he played a key role in almost every game they won since coming out of their slump and he has done an excellent job of settling the talented young pitchers down...Jason Giambi is having the type of year a reigning MVP should have (.329, 9, 28, .487 OBP, .596 SA). A veteran, he went through plenty of losing streaks with the wretched A's of the late '90s. The club leader, he helped keep the youngsters loose during their Opening Month in Hell... Mark Guthrie won two games in two nights on two pitches in each game Tuesday and Wednesday in Oakland's extra inning victories over the Yankees.

Seattle remains miles ahead (11 games, actually), in the AL West, with the A's starting to make a run for the top. However, Oakland would have to generate a streak like the Mariners began the season with, combined with the M's playing .500 ball, to have any hope of catching Seattle. The Angels are 12 out after Sunday's victory over Cleveland, while Texas has had more attention paid to them than any .333 team in recent memory, due to the presence of A-Rod.

About those Indians. Sunday's loss gave them a 28-13 record at week's end, leaving them a half game behind the Twins who, yes, Virginia, are for real. Although Bonds passed him up, Juan Gonzales hit three homers on Thursday, giving him 20 homers in 40 games, a new major league record for the fastest to reach 20. Detroit has quietly moved on up, winning 10 of their last 16, giving them a 20-21 record. Tony "The Tiger" Clark is back, with a .305 BA, .401 OBP, 6 homers and 29 RBI. His fellow slugger Bobby Higginson is at .292, .407, 6, 20 but is day-to-day after a serious muscle strain on Saturday. He probably will go on the DL. Just as we don't hear much about defensively-oriented catchers like Ramon Hernandez, we also hear little about middle relievers. Have you even heard of Victor Santos? The Detroit rookie gave up two runs on Saturday--his first two runs after a 27 1/3 scoreless inning streak to commence his career. His ERA is now 0.64. Many thought the young Royals would play like the young Phillies have this year, but they have been more like the young Pirates. No fault of veteran Mike Sweeney, who is not only hitting .310, with a .935 OPS (OBP + SA), 7 HRs and 27 RBI, but with 24 two baggers is on pace to set a new ML record with 88 doubles. The White Sox occupy the caboose of the ALC with a 14-27 record. In week six they lost Frank Thomas. This week they punished hitting coach Von Joshua for their slow start by firing him. Let's see how much their record improves for the remainder of the season without Joshua. Methinks not much.

This may be the season the Red Sox pull it off, at least winning the AL East. At close of play Sunday they led the Yanks by a game and a half, the Jays by 3. The O's are improving a bit, moving up to 5 1/2 games out. Tampa remains the only club with a sub-three WL%, 12-31, .279.

The Red Sox' Pedro Martinez was one of four Hall of Fame-quality pitchers who started on Friday, the others being Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson and Kevin Brown. Pedro shut out KC for 8 innings, lifting his record to 6-0. He has a 1.52 ERA, 95 K's in 65 IP, and only 14 walks. In fact all four of these guys not only strike out a lot of batters (all but Maddux are over a K per IP), but unlike most strikeout artists are very stingy with bases on balls. Johnson, the only one besides Pedro to win Friday, is now 5-3 (2.81), has an astonishing 111 K's in 73 IP, (particularly astonishing since he is 37 years old), with only 23 walks. Maddux has been the victim of low run support several times this year, accounting for the fact that he is 3-4 despite a classy 2.92 ERA. Friday, however, he gave up 4 earned runs in the Braves' 6-5 loss to SF. Maddux has "only" 54 K's in 62 IP (only, compared to these other three), but has walked K's in 62 IP (only, compared to these other three), but has walked just 8 batters all year! Brown had a rare bad outing Friday, giving up five earned runs in only four innings, dropping his record to 5-2. But his ERA is still only 1.86, he has fanned 53 in 53 innings, and is right behind Maddux with only 10 walks.

Despite Maddux and Glavine (4-2, 4.53), the Braves continue to struggle. John Smoltz made his first start since 1999 on Thursday, giving up 5 runs in 3 innings, so he has a ways to go yet. The Braves were 4-2 on the week, while first place Philly was 3-3, but the Phils still have a cozy 5 game lead and the Braves remain two games under .500. So are the Marlins, with whom the Braves are tied for second, while Montreal is 8 out, and the Mets continue to flounder at 17-26, 8 1/2 out.

In the NL Central, the Cardinals had their winning streak snapped at 10 on Friday, their longest such streak since the 1982 World Series winners. They are still atop the division, but the soaring Astros are right behind them at 24-18, one out. Last week we talked about Lance Berkman being the latest addition to the famous Killer Bees of Houston, but Monday Moises Alou's bases-loaded game-winning double reminded us of how potent Moises is when healthy. He hit .355, 30, 114 last year in only 126 games after missing all of '99 with a gruesome knee injury. Although he again missed some playing time early on, he is hitting .402 (.452 OBP), 6, 25, with a .661 SA.

The Cubs? Uh oh. Looks like old times, as they drop 8 of 10 and remain only 3 above .500 after their great start. Milwaukee has been hanging tough all season and are tied with the Cubs, 23-20, 2.5 out. The Reds are a big disappointment, 19-24, not all of which can be blamed on the loss of Griffey. The Pirates took another hit this week when they learned Kris Benson is lost for the year. Lloyd McLendon may be wondering if being a big league manager is all he hoped it would be. The Bucs are 15-27, 10 out.

The race out West got even tighter last week. Only 2 1/2 games separate the Dodgers, who lead the Giants and D-backs by a thin half-game margin, and the Rockies, who tumbled into last place with a 2-4 week, while the surprising Padres moved to 4th, 1 1/2 out with a 3-2 showing in Week Seven.

NL West notes: Luis Gonzales hit two more homers on Thursday, giving him 20 for the season. His teammate Mark Grace returned to Wrigley for the first time Friday, and unlike A-Rod and Mussina, Grace was cheered by his old fans. At least he was before the game, because he added to the Cubs' skid with 2 RBI in the D-backs 4-0 victory. Grace is having a typical year in his 14th ML season, but first outside Chicago, where he amassed 2201 hits. He is hitting .289, with 39 hits, 5 homers and 22 RBI. You don't think of Cooperstown when you think of the quiet, slick-fielding first sacker, but he is almost on pace to maintain his career average of 170 hits per season. If he could do that this year at age 37, and keep that up through age 40, he would have 2,881 hits at the end of 2004. If that happened, he could probably hang on long enough to reach 3,000, an automatic pass into the Hall. A long shot, but possible....Rickey Henderson is going to Cooperstown even if he retires tomorrow, but he is having sweet revenge on those 29 teams that didn't want any parts of him this Spring. In Saturday's 20-7 thrashing of the Expos, he became the 2nd player ever with 2,200 runs. Even the Pads were reluctant to use him early in the year, putting him on special waivers just a month ago. He specialed them, going on a hot streak and winning a starting slot. For the year he is hitting .293, with a Henderson-esque .410 OBP. He has always worked the pitchers for walks--he is now the career leader in that category. The 42-year-old has also swiped 10 bases this year, smacked 5 HRs, and driven in 11. He finished the week with 2,203 runs, only 43 behind Cobb. He has 2,933 hits, so barring injury he will reach 3,000 this season. 3,000 hits, and the all-time leader in steals, walks, and by then, runs. Did I mention he only needs 13 homers to join the 300-homer club?....Many, including yours truly, thought Mike Hampton might win some games in Colorado, but his 3.44 career ERA would surely sky-rocket. He is 6-1, 2.84 on the year, even with the disastrous six earned run performance in his second start at Coors. In his last five starts, he has given up 5 earned runs in 36 2/3 innings. These are fine numbers for any pitcher, but what sets the gutsy little lefty apart is that his ERA at Coors is 2.30, while it is 3.16 on the road.