Maybe J.D. Drew angered the baseball gods. After all, the sport is not meant to look as easy as Drew made it seem when he joined the St. Louis Cardinals.

He has since learned that it can be maddening.

Just getting on the field has been a chore for Drew, who is once again spending his winter rehabilitating in the hope that the breaks will even out.

	J.D. Drew hit just .252 with 18 home runs last season.

"This game isn't meant to be played hurt,'' Drew said.

That's about the only way Drew has played it since 1998, when he served as a pretty good sideshow during Mark McGwire's run to 70 homers.

Promoted to the big leagues in September, the former Florida State All-American hit .417 with five home runs and 13 RBI in 14 games. His combination of power and speed reminded some of a young Mickey Mantle.

Who would have thought that four seasons later his career high in RBI would be 73?

The Cardinals hope that Drew can have a breakout season in 2003. If he doesn't crank it up soon, he could become a forgotten man in a lineup built around Albert Pujols and Scott Rolen.

The first step is to get healthy. A few days after St. Louis lost to San Francisco in the National League Championship Series, Drew had arthroscopic surgery to repair patella tendinitis in his right knee.

Drew had played in constant pain throughout a disappointing season in which he hit .252 with 18 homers and 56 RBI. He had 104 strikeouts in 135 games. "The knee was hurting me all the time and really altered my swing,'' he said.

Cardinals manager Tony La Russa says Drew is recovering on schedule. He is expected to be ready for spring training.

"When they did the surgery, they went (into his knee) and it was clean,'' La Russa said. "He's coming along great. He's working really hard. I know he goes to the ballpark at 10 o'clock every morning, works till one. Everybody is real happy. We're real positive about him being a part of the '03 season, but we're going to be very careful.''

Even if the 27-year-old Drew seems near full strength in spring training, La Russa might not play him every day in the first half of the season. "It's a six-month season, not a three-month season,'' he said.

You can't blame La Russa for wanting to play it safe with Drew. He had the highest hopes for him when Drew reported to camp last March. He had spent the winter doing conditioning work after a series of injuries limited him to 109 games in 2001.

Within the first hour Drew was on the field, he stepped in a hole and hurt his ankle. It was a sign of the pain to come.

In 2003, Drew will be looking to break the cycle and live up to his advance billing. Here are a handful of others who are looking to justify the billing they received by flashing some serious skills upon their arrival in the big leagues:

Preston Wilson
After a couple of disappointing seasons, the guy who hit 31 home runs and drove in 121 runs in 2000 gets the best chance he'll ever have to restore some luster to his career. The five-year, $32.5-million contract Wilson signed in the spring of 2001 sent him to the Rockies as counter-balance in the deal that shipped Mike Hampton from Colorado to Atlanta via Florida.

Wilson hit 103 homers in his four full seasons with the Marlins, but only 23 last season. He was overweight and underproductive, batting .243 with 140 strikeouts. Coors Field beckons.

"He's at a point in his career where he can explode if he learns the strike zone,'' one NL executive said. "He strikes out too much, but it's not that he is overpowered. He swings at too many bad pitches, like Sammy (Sosa) did when he was younger. Sosa finally mastered the strike zone and look at him. Wilson hasn't shown he can master it yet.''

Adrian Beltre
Whether the Dodgers meant to cheat to get him is debatable. But there's no question that they would do almost anything to keep him once Major League Baseball had popped the franchise for signing him when he was underaged. Rather than allow him to become a free agent, the Dodgers put together a contract that paid him $2.8 million in 2002, only his third full season.

Beltre hasn't yet proved himself worthy of such trouble. He hit .257 with 21 home runs and 75 RBI as an everyday third baseman last season, missing only three games. His name has come up in some trade talks, most notably with the Cubs, but Dodgers GM Dan Evans isn't likely to let him go just yet. He'll have to put up big production next season or it could be his last in Los Angeles.

Carlos Lee
Here's a guy who appears to have turned the corner. Lee, who flashed his potential by hitting .293 with 84 RBI in 127 games as a 23-year-old in 1999, had gone backwards and was in danger of sliding out of the lineup when the light bulb went on in sessions with manager Jerry Manuel and hitting coach Gary Ward last May and June. They worked daily to help him get a better grip on the strike zone and it paid huge dividends.

	Carlos Lee Left fielder Chicago White Sox Profile
	2002 SEASON STATISTICS GM AB R HR RBI AVG 140 492 82 26 80 .264

During his impressive rookie season, Lee had a 6-1 ratio of strikeouts to walk. He'd cut that to only about 3-1 by 2001 but was a different animal last season, especially in the second half. He ended the year batting only .264, but had a .359 on-base percentage. He was one of only 13 major-leaguers to drive in 80-plus runs while having more walks than strikeouts.

Long-term commitments to Magglio Ordonez, Paul Konerko and Frank Thomas make it questionable whether the White Sox can keep Lee beyond 2003. If he picks up where he left off, it could be quite a showcase season.

Aramis Ramirez
If Ramirez is healthy, he's going to have a much better season in 2003. The Pittsburgh third baseman, who ranked near the bottom of qualifiers with a .234 batting average and .666 OPS, played with a pronounced limp for much of last season. Normally a solid third baseman, he was also a defensive liability. His production at the plate, as well as his play in the field, picked up late in the season as his movement became less restricted.

Ramirez is crucial in the Pirates' pop-gun lineup. It shouldn't be a surprise if he improved to 30-plus homers and 100 RBI.

Adam Dunn
Like Drew, Dunn was an instant success in the big leagues. He absolutely destroyed NL pitching after his promotion from Triple-A in 2001, hitting 19 homers and driving in 43 runs in 66 games. The former quarterback from Texas again came out swinging in 2002, hitting his way onto the All-Star team. But his stock plummeted in the second half.

Pitchers made adjustments to Dunn and his average just kept dropping. He hit .190 with nine homers and 17 RBI after the All-Star break, finishing the season at .249-26-71. Strikeouts are the biggest concern.

While Dunn has an excellent idea of the strike zone -- he finished only four walks shy (128) of Joe Morgan's club record -- the holes in his swing led to a club record 170 strikeouts. If new Reds hitting coach Tom Robson can help him tighten up his swing, he could have an absolutely monstrous 2003.

Phil Rogers is the national baseball writer for the Chicago Tribune, which has a web site at www.chicagosports.com.