SARASOTA, Fla. — Dmitri Young will never forget March 6, 2001.

        That night, the Reds defeated the New York Yankees in an exhibition game, 11-4. It's also when Young chatted with Dwight Gooden, one of his boyhood heroes.

        Young recalled the experience Saturday, one day after Gooden announced his retirement from baseball at age 36.

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        Young lived in Virginia Beach, Va., in the early 1980s, not far from where Gooden, Darryl Strawberry and several other New York Mets stars of that decade were playing with Triple-A Tidewater.

        To talk with Gooden as a fellow major-leaguer, Young admitted, was overwhelming. They had met before, but, said Young, “that was the first time I was actually able to have a conversation with him. I was calling him "Sir.' I was like, "Wow.' I was a big Mets fan. I just wanted to let him know that I used to watch him.”

        Gooden's well-documented problems with substance abuse didn't erode Young's adulation.

        “The off-field stuff doesn't matter,” Young said. “That's just a real-life situation people go through. Everybody's different. They have to deal with their own thing. For him to come back and admit to a problem, that makes him greater than human.”

        Third base coach Ron Oester also was impressed by Gooden, albeit from a peer's perspective.

        “He had a great fastball, but when he got the curveball over, he was really tough to hit. It was a really sharp-breaking curve,” said Oester, the former Reds second baseman who faced Gooden regularly. “He got by with two pitches, basically. He didn't throw anything else but fastballs and curveballs.”

        Gooden finished with a 194-112 career record. Early in his career, he appeared destined for greater heights.

        “I'm sorry to see his career go the way it did,” Oester said. “He had close to 200 wins and probably should have had 300. He'd probably tell you the same thing, that he should have taken care of himself a little more.”

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