By Bill Koch
The Cincinnati Enquirer

In four-plus years of playing with Sean Casey, Ken Griffey Jr. has learned one valuable lesson about his excitable teammate: When there's something to celebrate, you stand near Casey at your own risk.

And there's been plenty to celebrate lately.

A day after Casey playfully whacked Griffey in the head following a Casey home run, Junior's head was still ringing.

Griffey was the on-deck hitter at the time and would gladly have settled for a simple high-five.

"He got me pretty good," Griffey said. "He hit me with both hands. I should have just hit him with my bat on his shin."

Junior was ready Monday after Casey hit his sixth home run of the season. As Casey approached after crossing the plate, Griffey pulled back, then sneaked up behind Casey and gave him a shot to the helmet.

"I'll be looking to get him soon," Casey said.

With nine wins in their last 10 games, the first-place Reds are loose and having fun. No one is having more than Casey, who leads the National League with a .386 batting average after rapping out two more hits in the Reds' 7-5 victory over the Houston Astros at Great American Ball Park.

Griffey escaped harm Monday but Casey was a hazard again when he gave Barry Larkin a celebratory rap on the helmet after Larkin scored ahead of him on Griffey's two-run double in the sixth.

The Reds' first baseman had just executed a rather comical combination head-first slide and body roll across the plate with the Reds' fourth run, then pumped his fist as he got to his feet looking for the unsuspecting Larkin.

"I wasn't sliding head-first into home," Casey said. "I was going to take out (Astros catcher Brad) Ausmus, so my momentum was totally forward. There was nothing I could do at that point.

"I couldn't come back and slide. It was either take him out - but he didn't have the ball, so that would have been bootleg - or slide head-first, which I don't recommend."

Casey has been in the thick of the Reds' surge into first place. He has reached base in 39 of his 41 games and has hit safely in 36 of those games. His 31 RBI are second on the club to Griffey's 34 and he's hitting .436 with runners in scoring position, the third-best mark in the league.

Even when he doesn't sting the ball, as he has for most of the young season, it still seems to find a way to avoid opposing fielders.

"Soon it's going to be like Little League and everybody's going to use Case's bat," Griffey said.

Casey, who also leads the league in hits with 64 and multi-hit games with 22, is the first to admit that he would love to win his first batting title in the major leagues and become the first Red to do it since Pete Rose hit .338 in 1973.

But there are more important things to concentrate on now, like winning.

"I just ignore it," he said of his standing in the batting race. "I totally ignore it. I know I'm leading the league in hitting but I don't want to dwell on that. I don't want that to be my main focus. I want my focus to be, 'Are you driving in runs late in the game when it counts? Am I doing things to help the team win?' "

Ever since he arrived in Cincinnati in 1998 in exchange for pitcher Dave Burba, Casey has been the club's No. 1 cheerleader. It's hard to tell sometimes if he gets more excited over his own accomplishments or over something one of his teammates has done.

Left fielder Adam Dunn says he has never played with anyone quite like Casey.

"He's the ultimate team guy," Dunn said. "He cares so much about what all of us do."

Casey has won batting titles before. He was the NCAA Division I batting champion at Richmond (Va.) in 1995. He won the Carolina League title at Kinston (N.C.) in 1996 and was leading the Eastern League with a .386 average in 1997 when he was called up by the Cleveland Indians.

To win one in the major leagues would fulfill one of his dreams.

At this juncture, though, he won't indulge himself in the dream. For one thing, it's way too early to think about. But besides that, he's been waiting a long time to play in the postseason and he senses that this could be the year it happens.

"I've been here when we won in '99," Casey said. "I want to get back to that. I'm so sick and tired of losing. I'm at the point in my career now, even if was 4-for-4 with four home runs and we lost, that would be kind of an empty game for me."

But at least no one would get hurt.

E-mail bkoch@enquirer.com