He was going to change everything. Baseballs flew off his bat as if propelled by an artillery piece. New fans filled the ballparks for a peek at his power.

        Everything he said caused a sensation. Everywhere he went, the circus followed. Everything he did was not quite enough.

“If we get the pitching, it's not (a question of) whether we win the division. It's by how many games we win the division.” — Barry Larkin at start of season

        Ken Griffey in 2000? Or Babe Ruth in 1920?

        The two most momentous transactions in baseball history have this much in common: They made a more immediate impact at the box office than in the standings. Getting a great slugger is always a coup, but it guaran tees nothing.

        Mathematically eliminated from the National League's Central Division race Wednesday night, the Cincinnati Reds proved too fragile and too flawed for a meaningful run at October. They were a team, it turned out, whose pennant hopes were predicated on projections and prayer.

        “Ken Griffey Jr. certainly did his thing,” Reds General Manager Jim Bowden said Thursday. “He's hit 40 home runs. But the fact is, in baseball, no one player is going to get you to win. Look at the Cubs and Sammy Sosa every year. It's not like basketball, where you get a Michael Jordan and you've got a pretty good chance to compete.”

        In retrospect, Bowden is obviously right. Cincinnati's hopes were considerably higher, however, on the heady evening of Feb. 10. When Griffey was obtained from the Seattle Mariners, after weeks of high-profile haggling, Reds fans responded with an unprecedented stampede to the ticket windows. The Reds had won 96 games without Griffey in 1999, and it seemed reasonable to expect improvement.

        It seemed reasonable to expect the World Series.

        “If we get the pitching,” Reds captain Barry Larkin crowed, “It's not (a question of) whether we win the division. It's by how many games we win the division.”

        Euphoria was epidemic, but it was largely based on a false premise — that the performances that had made 96 wins possible in 1999 were easily repeated. Privately, several members of Reds management suspected the team's 2000 season was a tenuous proposition; that the club had experienced an unusual number of “career” years in 1999, and a startling streak without a serious injury. They worried that infielders Aaron Boone, Sean Casey and Pokey Reese would be hard-pressed to duplicate their breakthrough years. They fretted about the club's patchwork pitching.

        “I have a saying,” said Doc Rodgers, the assistant general manager. “The year after everything goes right, everything goes wrong. That's sports.

        “Baseball is a fragile thing. We thought if our pitching held up, we'd be in it to the end. If it didn't, we thought we'd be right where we are right now.”

        Even as the Reds were congratulating themselves as the game's foremost overachievers, some members of Jack McKeon's coaching staff were convinced they had seen a mirage. They argued that if a trade market existed for such surprising pitchers as Steve Parris and Ron Villone, it ought to be exploited. McKeon's enthusiasm about getting Griffey was tempered from the start by his anxiety about his available arms.

        “Are you interested in putting people in the ballpark?” the manager mused at one point. “Or are you interested in winning?”

        Bowden's strategy was to provide McKeon enough offense to remain in contention through the early months of the season, and then make a move for starting pitching near the mid-season trading deadline. This would serve to suppress the Reds' already-stretched payroll until the stretch drive, when a costly addition might be more easily justified by the push for a postseason payoff. It assumed the team would stay in contention and would sell enough tickets to generate some discretionary income.

        It was wishful thinking, true, but this is how it works in baseball's bargain basement. If everything doesn't fall into place, everything tends to fall apart.

        “We never got to the point of adding a hired gun,” Bowden said. “We knew in July that our attendance wasn't going to reach the level we would have needed. Economically, the bottom-line numbers weren't playing out the way we had hoped.”

        Because of injuries, the starting lineup projected in Sarasota would play together only 14 times. Griffey started slowly, former Colorado star Dante Bichette proved an ordinary hitter at sea level, and few of the holdover regulars hit consistently. The Reds' offense did not bolster their pitching so much as burden it. As the trading deadline approached, Bowden effectively surrendered the season by swapping Denny Neagle to the Yankees for four minor-league prospects.

        “It was very difficult,” Rodgers said. “But we watched this team for 3¹/₂ months and decided, "This is what we are.' No one else had the players the Yankees were offering. No one. Even so, it wasn't an easy decision. You have to ask yourself: "Are you prepared to go to a press conference knowing the first question will be, "Are you waving a white flag?'”

        Neagle had become the Reds' ace. He became the Yankees' pennant insurance. Sensing they would be unable to sign him to a new contract, the Reds elected to trade Neagle at the peak of the market rather than risk losing him for token compensation at the end of the season. It may well have been the right move, but it played poorly among the players and the fans. Finding quality pitching is difficult. Trying to replace it can be disheartening.

        Pitching wins championships. Always has. When the Yankees acquired Ruth from the Boston Red Sox, they created the foundation of a dynasty that endures to this day. But they would not win their first American League pennant until after they added Hall of Fame pitcher Waite Hoyt before the 1921 season. They would not win their first World Series until 1923, after fleecing the Red Sox for four of their five starting pitchers: Hoyt, Sam Jones, Herb Pennock and Joe Bush.

        Ken Griffey Jr. raised the Reds' profile, but he did nothing to help Pete Harnisch's problem shoulder or Scott Williamson's wildness. He ran down some of their mistakes in center field, and he would sometimes rescue them with heroic home runs, but he was ill-equipped to carry the club to a championship.

        Jimmie Foxx succeeded Ruth as baseball's most prodigious power hitter. He hit 302 home runs for the Philadelphia A's before his 28th birthday — a feat no other player has equalled — only to be traded at the top of his game.

        Foxx joined the Red Sox in time for the 1936 season, and Boston fell from fourth place to sixth. Ralph Kiner won seven straight home run titles for Pittsburgh, but was traded to the Chicago Cubs on the theory that the Pirates had finished last with him and could hardly fare worse without him.

        Though several of the game's greatest sluggers have switched teams in their prime, Frank Robinson (Baltimore, 1966) and Reggie Jackson (New York, 1977) are among the few who have immediately won pennants. When Mark McGwire struck his record 70 home runs for St. Louis in 1998, his Cardinals finished 19 games behind Houston.

        “When we first acquired McGwire, we were in need of a big bat in the lineup,” Cardinals General Manager Walt Jocketty said this week. “We found over the next couple of years that wasn't enough. We didn't have the pitching.”

        St. Louis' success this season is only tangentially attributable to McGwire's bat. The massive first baseman has missed roughly half of the season because of injuries and did not hit a home run between July 2 and Sept. 10. The Cardinals have compensated with deeper pitching, enhanced defense and an enormous year by Jim Edmonds.

        “I think the thing you have to realize is one player does not make a team,” Jocketty said. “You're not going to win championships with one strong player if you don't have a strong supporting cast.

        “What acquiring a player like a Griffey or a McGwire does, though, is it can really help revitalize your organization. McGwire has raised the identity of the franchise. He carried us at a time when we had to basically retool our club. He also gave us the resources to be in a financial position to increase our payroll.”

        Additional revenues generated by McGwire's home-run drawing power enabled the Cardinals to add $12 million to their payroll last winter in the form of pitchers Darryl Kile, Pat Hentgen and Andy Benes. Those three starters have won 44 games. The Reds' three most frequent starters — Parris, Villone and rookie Rob Bell — are 28-33.

        Whether the Reds will be able to borrow Jocketty's blueprint is uncertain. Though Bowden says Griffey “paid for himself,” he does not appear to have raised Reds revenues enough to cause Carl Lindner to authorize a significant increase in player payroll. Construction on the Great American Ballpark will reduce Cinergy Field's capacity by 14,000 seats in 2001. Bowden and Rodgers anticipate no significant increases in the club's payroll, though $18.25 million has already been committed to six players for next season (plus an additional $9.5 million in deferred salary), and as many as 12 Reds players could be eligible for salary arbitration.

        If Bowden is to add experienced (read: expensive) pitching, he may have to do so by trading young talent and forsaking the organization's long-term game plan. If he fails to add experienced pitching, though, the Reds may be hard-pressed to close the gap on St. Louis.

        “No matter what the payroll number is, we're still going to do everything we can to win,” Bowden said. “We're not just building for 2003. We want to win next year.”

        Getting Ken Griffey Jr. was a good place to start. The job, however, is a long way from finished.

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