Scott Miller

You missed what undoubtedly was one of the season's more touching conversations last week. So did I.

See, you and I weren't privy to it when Cubs closer Kerry Wood picked up the telephone and called his old rotation-mate, Mark Prior.

Prior, battling more pain, was forced to abort another comeback attempt -- this one with San Diego -- last week to undergo another surgery. This time, Prior had another tear in his shoulder. This makes it two season-ending surgeries in two years for Prior.

Ironically, the 27-year-old right-hander was undergoing surgery while the Cubs were in San Diego last week. Wood phoned him just before Prior went under the knife.

"He's had the same s--- before," Wood said. "Hopefully, he'll get through this. He's been through it before."

There's nobody else in the world who could talk with either of these two men as knowingly and honestly as they can talk with each other. Can't be. Nobody has lived through what Wood and Prior lived through in Chicago in the early 2000s, attempting to live up to those incredibly lofty (and, as it turned out, unreal) expectations, battling the injuries, never quite living up to what Cubs fans hoped.

Five outs from the 2003 World Series and it never would get any better than that. Prior started Games 2 and 6 against Florida in the '03 NL Championship Series; Wood started Games 3 and 7.

When the Cubs blew it, everybody braced for Prior and Wood to lead them to the promised land in '04 or, surely, by '05.

Never happened. There was soreness and pain and ice and the disabled list.

Now Wood's career as a starter is ostensibly finished, and he's thriving as the Cubs' closer.

Prior already seems washed up at 27. He's finished for this season, but vows to make another comeback attempt in 2009.

"He'll get through this, and hopefully he gets the chance to be healthy and pitch again," Wood said. "And if he doesn't, he's got a great family.

"He'll be OK."

Likes: David Ortiz becoming a U.S. citizen. How cool is it that Big Papi cares enough to do that? ... Tampa Bay. What an exciting, athletic, smart team. ... Kerry Wood's success as Cubs closer. He's been through so much, and he's so competitive, it's nice to see him finally healthy and having some success. ... The Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert. ... WGN running Nostalgia Night, or whatever it's called, and breaking out the WKRP in Cincinnati reruns. ... Correcting an old error by picking up a two-disc Dusty Springfield set. The error: Buying the Shelby Lynne disc of her interpreting some of Dusty's classics. No soul at all in that disc. Teaches me a lesson to just go for the original in the first place. Valuable lesson in a lot of areas.

Dislikes: Come on, give Ken Griffey Jr. the baseball from home run No. 600. The bickering is ridiculous.

Rock 'N' Roll Lyric of the Day:

"Well she was blond and tall
"She was 23
"Brought into the world
"To get the best of me
"And she never paid back
"Half what she stole
"She wanted my money
"So I gave her my soul"

-- Mudcrutch, The Wrong Thing to Do

Not only is one Tampa resident with a pretty good major-league background happy to see Tampa Bay's ascent this season, he's thrilled at the prospect of the Rays finally getting closer to a new ballpark, too.

But you can rest assured that Cubs manager Lou Piniella, who managed the Rays from 2003-2005, would do things a bit differently if someone handed him a draftsman's table and pencil.

"I hope so," he said when someone asked him whether he thinks the fans eventually will turn out to watch this Rays team during a conversation last week. "I hope the fans do turn out.

"I wasn't really crazy about the idea they had for a new ballpark, though."

The initial drawings for Tampa Bay's new baseball stadium look very cool. Plans are for it to be built on the site of historical Al Lang Field, the longtime spring training facility, right on the St. Petersburg waterfront.

It resembles a big sailboat, with a retractable roof that will be comprised of a light, weatherproof fabric. The idea is to shield the field from rain while leaving an open-air feel to the park. The club is advertising "sweeping waterfront views."

Mostly sounds pretty good.

What's not to like?

"I think they need (a park) like Houston's," Piniella said. "Open-air tent, Al Lang Field ... there's no parking down there. It's not an air-conditioned dome, which is what they need.

"It rains quite a bit in Florida in the summer in the late afternoon. It's muggy. If I had anything to do with it, which I don't, I'd build a ballpark just like Houston's. It would work in Tampa and it would work in Miami.

"They've got that tent thing. A hurricane comes, there won't be a tent there anymore."

Whatever, the feeling here is, anything is better than the catwalks in Tropicana Field. And the St. Pete waterfront is a beautiful location.

Now, all they need is -- gulp -- to secure the funding to get it done. Right now it must be approved via public referendum, so the pressure is on the Rays to get it onto the November ballot in the city of St. Petersburg.

They do that, they've got a chance to be in a new park by Opening Day 2012.

They don't, the battle continues.

Likes: Ken Griffey Jr.'s 600th. Here's to the The Kid doing it the right way. ... Longtime Mets beat writer Marty Noble, now covering the team for mlb.com, acknowledging that pitcher Wil Ledezma spells his first name oddly but concluding that "you can't blame a pitcher for giving up an extra 'L'." ... Marc Topkin, veteran Tampa Bay beat writer for the St. Petersburg Times, delivering a box of In-N-Out burgers to the Rays' radio men, Andy Freed and Dave Wills, at Angels Stadium before Tuesday's game. Inexplicably, neither of the two -- both in their fourth seasons -- had ever had In-N-Out. ... Bob Nightengale's feature on Mike Scioscia in USA Today, specifically the revelation that Scioscia proposed to his wife of 23 years, Anne, over a drive-thru dinner of In-N-Out burgers. I told Scioscia on Tuesday that that might be my favorite thing I've heard this season. "That double-double was good," Scioscia responded, grinning broadly. I think he meant it tasted even better after his then-fiance said yes, but I can't be sure. ... Tampa Bay outfielders Carl Crawford and B.J. Upton. Not only are they talented on the field, they get it off of the field. ... The latest disc from the Drive-By Truckers, Brighter Than Creation's Dark. Some terrific stuff on there.

Dislikes: Let's just say I had to fill up my car with gas today.

Rock 'N' Roll Lyric of the Day:

"He likes to drink a beer or two every now and again,
"He always had more dogs than he ever had friends
"Bob ain't light in the loafers
"He might kneel but he never bends over"

-- Drive-By Truckers, Bob

Think about this for a minute:

It took Ken Griffey Jr. a total of 1,722 at-bats to move from career homer No. 500 to career homer 600, which he slugged on Monday night in Florida.

It took Barry Bonds only 710 at-bats to cover the same distance from 500 to 600.

Each man hit No. 600 when he was 38.

Think there was a level playing field?

Granted, Griffey has had his share of injuries, which is why nearly four years elapsed between No. 500, struck on June 20, 2004, and 600. He missed the second half of the 2004 season with a torn hamstring, and he missed nearly a month of the 2006 season with a strained knee.

It took Bonds barely more than one year to move from 500 to 600 -- from April 17, 2001, to Aug. 9, 2002.

The years can be skewed. Say one player stays healthy and the other is injury-plagued -- well, of course it will take longer for the player battling the disabled list.

But at-bats are a pretty good barometer.

I knew Bonds moved along at a breakneck clip in the early 2000s. But when I contacted home run guru David Vincent, who tracks homers for the Society for American Baseball Research and is the country's premier expert on the subject, even I was stunned.

The fact that it took Griffey roughly 1,000 more at-bats than Bonds to move from 500 to 600 is staggering. Even suspecting what most of us suspect about Bonds and the Steroid Era.

A junkie (home runs, not human growth hormone) could spend hours poring over Vincent's fascinating spreadsheets.

A handful of other relative home run numbers gleaned from Vincent's numbers:

Of the six members of the 600-homer club, nobody was even remotely as quick as Bonds in moving from No. 500 to 600. It took Babe Ruth 1,120 at-bats to do so, Sammy Sosa 1,605, Hank Aaron 1,402 and Willie Mays 1,981.

Time-wise, it took Ruth barely more than two years (Aug. 11, 1929, to Aug. 21, 1931) to go from 500 to 600, Aaron a little less than three years (July 14, 1968, to April 27, 1971), Mays nearly four years on the nose (Sept. 13, 1965, to Sept. 22, 1969) and Sosa a little more than four years (April 4, 2003, to June 20, 2007).

Of course, Sosa was out of the game in 2006 -- partly for reasons beyond suspicious -- else he would have gotten there more quickly.

Bonds finished -- if he is indeed finished -- with 762 home runs in 9,847 at-bats.

Griffey currently is at 600 in 9,045 at-bats. And had he not lost an estimated 450 games to the disabled list from the time he arrived in Cincinnati in 2000 through 2005, his number today undoubtedly would be far higher than 600.

Probably not as high as 762.

But at least Griffey almost certainly can look himself in the mirror today and know he is the first clean guy to join the 600 club since Aaron in 1971.

In a statistics-driven game that is still wiping the steroids muck off of the record book, some things are more important than the raw numbers.