Jim Thome

Jim Thome's agent wants the Cleveland Indians to make their final offer by Monday. "His wife is due with the baby," Pat Rooney said yesterday. "They would like to get moving on this and get the process going. " Thome's wife, Andrea, is expecting the couple's first child around Christmas. Cleveland already has made an offer thought to be worth $40 million to $48 million over four years. Indians general manager Mark Shapiro has spent part of the last week talking with owner Larry Dolan about ways that the club can increase its proposal to Thome.

The anxiety should end today for the Phillies and the Cleveland Indians. After a long Thanksgiving weekend with Final Jeopardy! music ringing in their ears, an answer should be forthcoming from the biggest free-agent prize on this year's market. Everybody knows the question by now: Will slugging first baseman Jim Thome stay in Cleveland or come to Philadelphia? Phillies general manager Ed Wade had hoped to have that answer last night, but as he headed home from Annapolis, Md., after dropping off his son, Ryan, at the Naval Academy, he still had not heard from Thome's agent, Pat Rooney.

The perception going into last season was that Jim Thome needed time to adjust. To his new team. To National League pitching. Then Thome tied for the major-league lead with 47 home runs and drove in a career-high 131 runs. If that's what he could do without any familiarity with NL pitching, imagine what he could do with a little knowledge of it. Phillies manager Larry Bowa thinks that another year in the NL will help Thome. He said that it could help him cut down on his strikeouts - he led the league with 182 last season - and hit for a higher average.

Jim Thome is looking to forget about the immediate past. In fact, Thome would rather not look at much of this season, but he does see light at the end of the proverbial batting tunnel. Even after earning three walks in last night's 6-5 win over the visiting San Francisco Giants, Thome, who is now batting .207 with two home runs, and manager Charlie Manuel saw positives. "I like it when he is patient," Manuel said. "It shows he is on the ball and following the ball, and that's a good sign.

It has come time for Phillies first baseman Jim Thome to figure out whatever he needs to figure out. The team needs him. He entered last night's 8-5 victory over the Florida Marlins at Dolphins Stadium hitting just .185 with one homer and 12 RBIs. He was 1 for 13 (.077) since he returned from the disabled list Saturday in Baltimore after being sidelined with a lower back strain. But perhaps he found his stroke last night. He went 3 for 4 with a walk, two runs scored and an RBI to raise his average to .208.

Injuries, slumps, bad luck. In the first half, the Cleveland Indians seemed to be returning to a pattern that prevailed for years before 1995. Only guess who's in first place? The Indians. "That's all I want to know, that's all I care about," said Cleveland catcher Sandy Alomar, the AL's leading hitter at .375 who will carry a 30-game hitting streak into the second half. After closing out a three-game sweep of visiting Kansas City yesterday with an 8-7 victory, the Indians arrived at the halfway mark with a 44-36 record, 3 1/2 games ahead of second-place Chicago in the Central Division.

Playtime is over for the Cleveland Indians. In an attempt to get his team focused on winning, manager Charlie Manuel had a Ping-Pong table and two cushy couches removed from the Indians' clubhouse. He also has banned card games. Only the big-screen TV survived. Trouble is, players have to stand to watch it. "I felt these things were a distraction from what we really wanted to accomplish: to play baseball - winning baseball," Manuel said yesterday before the inspired Indians went out and routed the first-place Toronto Blue Jays, 9-4. "This is not a punishment.

BRANDON MORROW pitched seven scoreless innings and the Toronto Blue Jays further dampened Tampa Bay's playoff hopes, beating David Price and the Rays, 5-1, last night in St. Petersburg, Fla. The Rays have lost four of five and dropped 2 1/2 games behind Boston in the AL wild-card race; the Red Sox were rained out at New York last night. A night after pounding out 17 hits in a 15-8 romp at Yankee Stadium, the Rays were limited to Matt Joyce's second-inning infield single until Casey Kotchman singled with one out in the seventh off Morrow (11-11)

RAMON SANTIAGO hit a solo homer in the 10th inning to give the Detroit Tigers a 2-1 win over the visiting Kansas City Royals last night. Santiago, who entered the game in the eighth as a pinch-runner, lifted Aaron Crow's pitch over the rightfield wall for only his fourth homer of the year. Joaquin Benoit (4-3) pitched two innings for the Tigers, matching his longest outing of the season. Crow (3-4) struck out Wilson Betemit with the bases loaded to end the ninth, and he got the first out of the 10th before allowing Santiago's surprising homer.

CLEARWATER, Fla. - Third baseman Placido Polanco said X-rays of his left ring finger taken after he left Saturday's game against Toronto were negative, and he categorized himself as day-to-day. "It's a little stiff today and a little swelling," Polanco said Sunday morning. "I jammed it, and it's day-to-day. I just have to see how I feel every day. " Assistant general manager Scott Proefrock described the injury as "a little sprain" and said Polanco would miss only a couple of days.