CINCINNATI -- Ken Griffey Jr. was eligible to come off the disabled list Monday, but Cincinnati Reds fans shouldn't expect to see him in center field any time soon.

	Griffey

The Reds said Sunday that Griffey won't be back for another three or four weeks.

Reds medical director Tim Kremchek said Griffey has entered a crucial stage in his rehabilitation and his status should be known in the next 10 days.

Griffey, who's sidelined by a partial tear in his left hamstring, is ready to increase and intensify his running and weightlifting.

Kremchek said Griffey will be back within a month if the injury has shown improvement.

Griffey said his daily therapy sessions have been going well and he's making slow progress. He's still not allowed to run, however, and there's no telling when he'll get to that point.

"The 2½ hours of what I've been doing (in therapy) has gone up to 45 minutes longer," Griffey said. "I'm doing a little more activity -- gradual jogging, backward running, things like that."

He took batting practice before Sunday night's game against Houston, but wasn't allowed to do anything more strenuous.

The Reds don't want to make the same mistake twice with Griffey, who hurt the hamstring during a March 26 spring training game. They let him stay on the roster as a pinch-hitter, and he went 0-for-12 with five strikeouts.

He aggravated the injury while running to first on his last pinch-hit appearance April 28, and the Reds put him on the disabled list two days later. They don't want to bring him back before the hamstring is completely healed and have him aggravate it again.

Although is baseball career is marooned by a torn hamstring for the second consecutive season, Griffey seems to be handling it well. One sign of how it's going: He hasn't sold off all of his belongings.

"I guess you could say I'm very superstitious about a lot of things," he said. "Jay Buhner and I -- when things go bad, we want to sell everything. If we go 0-for-10, we'll want to sell a car, a house."

What has he sold while he's been on the disabled list?

"Nothing," he said. "My wife won't let me."