OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) – As Ken Griffey Jr. closes in on another major milestone, it’s clear 500 home runs means a lot more to his family than it does to the slugger.

While his wife, kids and father made the long journey to Oakland to see if Griffey can hit the two homers he needs to become the 20th player in that exclusive club, Griffey tried to deflect any questions about the meaning of the milestone.

“I haven’t hit it yet, so I can’t tell you how it will feel,” Griffey said before Monday’s game against Mark Mulder.

Even though the 34-year-old Griffey is poised to reach 500 faster than all but five players, getting there has taken longer than people thought.

Griffey finished the 2000 season – his first with Cincinnati – with 438 homers, trailing Barry Bonds by only 56, and seemed ready to reach 500 in early 2002.

But three injury-plagued seasons have delayed the milestone by two years. Now, instead of Griffey being the player mentioned as most likely to break Hank Aaron’s career record of 755 home runs, it’s Bonds who has that label with 674 homers.

“If he had stayed healthy, he would have done some awesome things,” said Expos manager Frank Robinson,

one of the members of the 500 club. “It just wasn’t to be. But he’s still a young man as far as this game is concerned.”

After a slow start this season it seemed as if Griffey would never regain the form that made him an All-Century player ahead of Bonds. Pitchers challenged him with impunity and even intentionally walked Sean Casey to face him – quite an insult for a player of Griffey’s caliber.

But over the past couple weeks, Griffey once again is hitting the way he did when he was younger. He had nine homers is his previous 14 games, including two Sunday against Montreal, coming into the series with the A’s.

“They started missing the label and hitting the barrel,” he said. “For a while the balls were hitting the label. A few minor adjustments had to be made, and that’s it.”

While Griffey’s father, who hit 172 homers in his big league career, came to watch his son this week, the two haven’t talked about what the milestone would mean.

“We don’t talk about things like that,” Griffey said. “As a father and son we don’t talk about accomplishments. He comes in and asks where the kids are. Even when I played Little League or basketball, he always asked how the team did first, and then at the end he’d ask how I did.”

Griffey’s heralded return home to Cincinnati has not been the fairy tale people thought it would be. Acquired in a trade with Seattle before the 2000 season, Griffey signed a below-market $116.5 million, nine-year contract just to be able to stay at home.

But the assortment of injuries and losses turned the once happy-go-lucky, backwards-cap wearing kid into a frustrated veteran. The Reds even tried to trade him only to have Phil Nevin block a deal to San Diego after the 2002 season and an injury halt talk of a trade to the New York Yankees last summer.

Now the Reds are in first place and Griffey is happy to be coming to the ballpark. Most importantly, he is healthy.

“There are good days and bad days. I just deal with it like every other player in the league,” he said. “If I run into a wall, I run into a wall. If I have to dive I’ll dive. If I get hurt doing that then I’ll go home. It’s as simple as that.”

Griffey’s resurgence has caught the attention of his opponents.While the A’s would prefer to watch Griffey reach the milestone on TV instead of in person, they respect what he’s gone through recently.

“You don’t ever want to see anybody of that caliber get hurt so many times,” A’s first baseman Scott Hatteberg said. “I’ve always considered him to be one of the greatest players I’ve seen. To see him get back where he was is great.”

AP-ES-06-07-04 2115EDT