Jason Giambi will tell his steroids story to George Mitchell, bowing to pressure from baseball Commissioner Bud Selig.

Giambi announced yesterday that he would cooperate with the steroids investigator and publicly admitted for the first time that he had a "personal history regarding steroids." He will become the first active player known to speak with the former Senate majority leader.

No date was set for their session. The former American League MVP said he wouldn’t implicate other players and appeared to backtrack on earlier remarks that the sport owed fans a collective apology for the steroids era.

"I alone am responsible for my actions, and I apologize to the commissioner, the owners and the players for any suggestion that they were responsible for my behavior," Giambi said in a statement.

Selig said the meeting with Mitchell will take place "promptly." After remarks by Giambi that seemed to be an admission of steroids use, the commissioner had threatened discipline if he didn’t talk to Mitchell.

Selig again left open the possibility of punishment.

"I will take Mr. Giambi’s level of cooperation into account in determining appropriate further action," he said.

Giambi’s decision came two weeks after Selig requested the meeting and followed contentious negotiations between management and union lawyers. Selig called Giambi’s cooperation an "important step forward" in Mitchell’s efforts to provide a comprehensive report on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball. But by pressuring Giambi to testify, Selig might have made other players even more reticent to discuss steroids.

Mitchell’s investigation, which began in March 2006, has gone more slowly than he expected. Giambi said there were boundaries on what he would tell Mitchell.

"I will address my own personal history regarding steroids. I will not discuss in any fashion any other individual," Giambi said.

Giambi is in the sixth season of a $120 million, seven-year contract with the Yankees. He hasn’t played since May 30 because of a foot injury, and it is not known when he will be able to play again.

● GRIFFEY FEARS SEATTLE BOOS: He was the grinning, boyish face of the Seattle Mariners. Really, the first face the team ever had.

Yet as Ken Griffey Jr. returns this weekend to play in Seattle for the first time since he forced his way out of town in 2000, he is fearful.

Of getting booed.

Griffey returns to Seattle tonight with the Cincinnati Reds.

"I have none right now because I don’t know what to expect," Griffey said of his emotions this week.

"People take it as I don’t want to go back, but it’s just that I don’t know what to expect. Maybe it will be different once I get there."

Griffey, now 37 with 582 career home runs, was loved by the Mariners faithful before he left town in 2000. He was Seattle’s first national superstar athlete, known for his mammoth home runs and the way he wore his cap backward.

They even named a chocolate bar after their beloved "Junior" out there, even though he’s allergic to chocolate.

Mariners President Chuck Armstrong doesn’t think Griffey will be greeted with the intense boos Alex Rodriguez still hears seven years after he bolted to take the largest contract in baseball history with the Texas Rangers.

"I know when I talked to him he was worried that maybe the fans might boo him here, because they have booed Alex Rodriguez and because Randy Johnson’s received mixed reviews here. I told him, ‘No, I don’t think that’s something you need to worry about,’ " said Armstrong, who was the team’s president when it drafted Griffey first overall in 1987.

"He is such an important part of the history of this franchise. … It’s been over seven seasons since he’s gone, and I think his stature here has only grown."

● ROGERS RETURNING FROM DL: Kenny Rogers is back, in more ways than one.

The Detroit Tigers ace makes his first start of the season tonight, less than three months after surgery to remove a blood clot from his left shoulder. It would have been an uneasy procedure for any 42-year-old man, much less a major-league pitcher who makes his living throwing with that arm.

And, as fate would have it, his first start will be in Atlanta, scene of one of the toughest moments of his long career.

Rogers hasn’t pitched at Turner Field since 1999, when he walked Andruw Jones with the bases loaded in the 11th inning of Game 6 of the National League Championship Series. The base on balls sent the Braves to the World Series and ended the season for Rogers’ team, the New York Mets.

● TEJADA’S STREAK COULD END: Baltimore Orioles shortstop Miguel Tejada might see his consecutive games streak come to an end at 1,152.

According to a report in the Baltimore Sun today, Tejada has a nondisplaced fracture in his left wrist - a result of being hit by a Doug Brocail pitch in Wednesday’s game against San Diego.

Tejada tried to play through the injury and started yesterday’s game. However, unable to swing, he bunted the second pitch from David Wells and was replaced by a pinch runner.

Tejada will be re-evaluated before tonight’s game, the start of a three-game set against the Arizona Diamondbacks, but it is thought he could be facing a trip to the disabled list.

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