NEW YORK – Nowhere on his body did the grind of 1982 show on Rickey Henderson. Each of the 150 or so times he dove face-first into a base that year, a lithe torpedo of thievery, he came up feeling great in the arms, torso, hips and legs. Inside his head, well, with Rickey, it wasn't exactly screwed on straight in the first place, but that many kamikaze missions tend to rattle the brain.

"I don't know how I lasted hitting the dirt that many times," Henderson said. "But it is 25 years later, and I'm doing OK. And my name is still in there."

Yes it is, right next to the record that could last longer than DiMaggio's 56 game-hitting streak and Bonds' 73-home run season and even Ripken's games-played milestone: 130 stolen bases in a season.

"Seventy is tough," said New York Mets shortstop Jose Reyes, who leads the major leagues with 78. "Imagine 130. Look at my last two years. I had 124 total. He had 130 in one year."

Yes, in one year Henderson stole more bases than 28 major league teams

Ever since Barry Bonds broke baseball's home run record, his limp to irrelevancy has become more pronounced. The San Francisco Giants are slumming in last place, Bonds often rests his weary 43-year-old body and the performance-enhancing drug mess, at least for now, seems focused elsewhere.

"I haven't heard a word about him in weeks," Matt Murphy said a few days ago. "It's (messing) up my cause."

Murphy's cause is his bank account, which stands to fatten substantially because the 756th home run ball of Bonds' career – Murphy's megabucks needle plucked from the haystack of fortune-seekers – sold at auction Saturday night for a winning bid of $752,467, significantly beyond the $500,000 Murphy hoped to fetch. But it didn't come anywhere close to the record $3 million spent on Mark McGwire's 70th home run in 1998.

The winning bidder, whose identity wasn't immediately divulged, will pay Murphy $627,056 and must also pay SCP Auctions an additional 20%, making the total amount paid for the

Bravo, dear readers. We're at about 2,000 e-mails and counting on Rick Ankiel, and many encouraged me to perform acts heretofore believed anatomically impossible.

Somewhere among the muck and mire, however, were some thought-provoking letters that will allow me to further elucidate my point of view on Ankiel and human growth hormone's place in baseball.

Before I get there, a correction: In the story, I originally said HGH provides an artificial testosterone boost. That was incorrect. HGH does not stimulate testosterone. It does facilitate the production of insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1), which, like testosterone, has anabolic (muscle-building) properties in adults. I apologize for the error and hope it doesn't cloud the broader viewpoint.

On to the letters:

Is there no distinction between using a drug for rehabilitation purposes and using it just to use it? During the time that he was getting these shipments, wasn't Rick Ankiel still rehabilitating from Tommy John surgery, and not

NEW YORK – As Detroit laments the loss of Jeremy Bonderman and Arizona tries to fill the hole left by Orlando Hudson and St. Louis finally figures out why Chris Duncan has looked so awful and San Diego sighs at the inevitable Milton Bradley injury – as the rest of baseball frets, the vise of September squeezing so tight it makes the eyeballs hurt – the New York Yankees and New York Mets float along, seemingly immune to pratfalls.

Oh, there are the occasional blunders, like the Yankees' series loss to Tampa Bay and the Mets' blanking last week in Cincinnati. And yet both teams find themselves comfortably ahead in their respective races – American League wild card and National League East – and as October beckons, as much as those everywhere else in the U.S. might cringe, New York is positioning itself as the nerve center for postseason baseball.

The Yankees have won five consecutive, the Mets eight of 10. Alex Rodriguez is hitting .533 with eight home runs and 15 RBIs in September, and

NEW YORK – Pedro Martinez is starting to feel old. He is 35 now, a bit thick in the midsection, finally beginning to accept that his body will never do things it used to. He understands, too, that while age gifts him wisdom and patience, it does so knowing he needs such virtues.

Paolino Jaime Abreu, Martinez's 77-year-old father, might be sick. In the past year, lymphoma had invaded his body, and doctors in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., thought they had eradicated it. Then the spots showed up last week, the same pocks on his skin that signaled cancer the first time.

"So we're going to bring him back to have him checked," Martinez said. "He was totally clean. They sent him home.

"Now we don't know."

Uncertainty is somewhat of a theme in Martinez's life, from his father's health to his status with the New York Mets. Yes, Martinez will receive a Richter-registering ovation when he makes his Shea Stadium season debut starting Sunday's series finale against the Houston Astros. Charisma and legacy

Sometime over the last month, as Rick Ankiel launched home runs and put a defibrillator to his career and thrust the St. Louis Cardinals back into the playoff race, the irony of his new nickname must have dawned on him.

The Natural.

It's funny and sad now, of course, in light of the New York Daily News' bombshell late Thursday that linked Ankiel to a 12-month prescription of human growth hormone in 2004. The author of baseball's greatest story this season – the one guy in whom everyone, Cardinals fans or otherwise, wanted to believe – was allegedly just like Barry Bonds: seeking glory through needles.

The continued marriage between Major League Baseball players and performance-enhancing drugs came as no surprise, with the fallout of the latest scandal, stemming from the federal raid of Signature Pharmacy in Orlando, bound to extend its tentacles to baseball. The name, though – that was a shock, and a disappointment, too, because it reinforced the notion that baseball players, even

NEW YORK – Maybe this is the year bright lights inspire Alex Rodriguez instead of sending him to the never-never land where his wooden baseball bat turns flaccid.

A set of shining bulbs certainly did the job Wednesday.

At 5:30 p.m., when his New York Yankees teammates were finishing up batting practice, Rodriguez found himself inside an MRI tube, an experience best described as getting a live tour of what a hot dog must feel as it's stuffed into its casing. Add in the machine emitting ear-splitting noise and light bulbs with a wattage of, oh, ∞ or so, and it's not exactly Gipper-level motivation material.

Which makes Rodriguez's performance Wednesday night against the Seattle Mariners all the more special, perhaps the ultimate moment in a season full of them.

Hobbled by a right ankle sprain, Rodriguez sweet-talked his way back into the lineup after manager Joe Torre had given him the night off, tied the game with a home run to lead off the seventh inning and followed later in the same

Over the last 10 days, the Seattle Mariners lost nine games in a row, gagged away their wild-card lead and fell out of contention in their division. Their prize, Johnny?

The toughest schedule for the rest of the season!

The Mariners did win the first of three games in New York on Monday afternoon, snapping the losing streak, but it doesn't make their remaining games any less imposing. Same goes for the St. Louis Cardinals, who won't get any time to rest – literally – as they try to defend their title.

Here are the rankings of contenders' schedules by league, from most difficult to easiest, with the teams' records entering Monday.

American League

1) Seattle Mariners (73-62, 2 games back of AL wild card, 6½ games back of AL West)

Series remaining: at New York (3), at Detroit (3), Oakland (3), Tampa Bay (4), at Oakland (3), at Los Angeles (4), Cleveland (4), Texas (3)

Home/road split: 14/13

Opponents' combined record: 562-533 (.513)

Key Series: At Los Angeles, Sept. 20-23

Outlook: Grim.