DAYTON — Adam Dunn is hungry.

        Armed with a big bag of Doritos, he hops aboard the MCI E-Model Renaissance motor coach.

        Also aboard the Dayton-bound bus are fellow Reds Austin Kearns and Scott MacRae, and the rest of the Reds party that includes, among others, John Allen, Bob Boone and Marty Brennaman.

HOOPSTER

Being that March Madness isn't all that far away, we thought you'd like to know: Adam Dunn was a heck of a basketball player.         He didn't tell us; his coach at New Caney (Tex.) High did.         Much is known about Dunn's quarterbacking prowess...and some about his pitching prowess. He was also an excellent shot-putter. But, until now, his hooping aptitude has gone unchronicled.         “I harass Adam when I see him,” said Coach Scott Castleberry. “I say, "Adam, you're always talking about Texas football, but how about giving us a plug? Just mention it. Just say that you played.”'         Dunn did more than play.         “He was a terrific post player, a man among boys,” Castleberry said. “He set the school shot-blocking record — 278 of 'em for his high school career. He was first-team all-district his junior and senior years, second team his sophomore year. As a junior, he was (district) defensive player of the year; we went to the playoffs for the first time in 30 years.”         OK, coach, consider it Dunn.

        Dayton is the first stop on the 1,060-mile Reds caravan. Day two is Lima and Columbus; day three Louisville, Lexington and Charleston. The six cities comprise much of Reds country. Dunn is a nice coup for the fans, because he made a big splash last season after his July call-up.

        Dunn makes himself comfortable, getting as prone as a 6-foot-6, 250-pound guy can get on a 6-foot-long couch. He eats his chips, watches a pro wrestling video, shoots the breeze.

        “I don't know why Trish is wrestling her,” he says.

        He offers Doritos to MacRae and Kearns; they decline. They won't likely be seeing real food until well into the evening, probably after the Reds' 7-9 p.m. visit to the Miami Valley Baseball Academy.

        Dunn says he's on a nutritional plan that calls for six meals a day to burn up the calories more efficiently and maintain a high-energy level. Doritos is not one of the meals. Before the evening is over, he'll wish he had packed a sandwich. Some things in baseball, such as 22-year-olds munching on Doritos, never change.

        He's enjoyed the offseason: a turkey-hunting trip to California, and a trip to Las Vegas for the Lennox Lewis-Hasim Rahman heavyweight title fight, where he was sitting so close to actress Meg Ryan he could smell her hair.

        The glitterati were out, and Dunn was among them. It wasn't just the fragrances of the evening making him dizzy. His ascent from raw baseball player to pheenom was liquid oxygen-fueled. Only a year earlier, he had struck out 101 times in 420 at-bats in Single-A Dayton.

        Also included in the space ride: the Super Bowl in New Orleans.

        “The perks are nice, but you can't play for the perks,” Dunn says. “I've known some guys who do that, and it doesn't work out. I've been hitting a lot. I've been hitting for a month and a half. This is the most anxious I've ever been to get to spring training. I can't wait to get started.”

        Despite the rush-hour traffic (the motor coach left Cinergy Field at 5:30 p.m.), it takes only an hour to get to Dayton. When the motorcoach arrives, Boone refers to Dayton stadium as “The House That Kearns Built.'

        Kearns, 21, may not have built it, but he owned it for a year, hitting .306 with 27 homers and 104 RBI. In that 2000 season in Class A ball, Kearns was, by far, the best player on a team of good ones, including Dunn (.281, 16 HR, 79 RBI, .281).

        For all of Dunn's success last year — 51 home runs in a combined 594 at-bats at Double-A Chattanooga, Triple-A Louisville and Cincinnati (and three more HRs in two All-Star games) — he knows a great young outfielder when he sees one. He doesn't see one in the mirror, not after seeing Kearns.

        Nobody fawns over Dunn, because his body language repels it. He's a down-home Texan in blue jeans. A white-bass chasin' good ol' boy. He's not expecting the star treatment, because as a baseball player he's never received it. He doesn't have the baptized-in-the-river talent of the young Johnny Bench and Ken Griffey Jr. He doesn't “big-league” anybody. He wasn't a first-round draft pick, didn't win the quarterback's job outright at the University of Texas, never received a baseball inscribed by Ted Williams “To a future Hall of Famer for sure” (Johnny Bench, circa 1968.)

        Besides, how could Dunn get a big head with MacRae occasionally addressing him on this trip, good-naturedly, as “E-7”?

        “If I learned anything last year, it was that,” Dunn says. “Treat people nicely. It's not asking very much. Treat them as you'd like to be treated. It's worth it.”

        His introduction to the fans in Dayton draws an only negligibly louder ovation than Kearns'.

FAN FAVE

Everywhere he goes, young Reds slugger Adam Dunn gives people their money's worth.         Actually, the fans who attended the Reds' recent six-city caravan didn't have to pay anything, but Dunn gave them their money's worth, anyway.         He posed with babies and babes (and we aren't talking about George Herman Ruth lookalikes) and yukked it up with parents and their kids, while also taking some shots at himself.         In Dayton, a fan handed him an official major-league base to autograph. Dunn quipped: “This is what I'm going to do when I steal 50 next year.”         A 12-year boy in a T-shirt came by: “Let's see you flex!” Dunn says. An eight-year-old with a big grin on his face: “What's so funny, buddy? You got a joke or something?” A woman remarks she has a mismarked bubblegum card that identifies Dunn as a righthanded pitcher: “I can "bring' it!' says Dunn, referring to his fastball.         “Hand cramping up yet?” asks a father.         “Naw, just my stomach,” answers a hungry Dunn.         A fan suggests somebody go get him a pretzel: “A pretzel ain't gonna cut it,” Dunn says.         A lady mock-clutches a box of Wheaties touting the 1990 World Champion Reds, afraid that Dunn might eat them.         “If you brought along some milk, I just might,” says Dunn, who was 10 years old in 1990.         A younger woman asks if she can have her picture taken with Dunn on this, her birthday.         “I will — if you tell me how old you are,” Dunn says.         “I'm not going to tell you that,” she says.         He lets her pose with him, anyway.         “Nineteen,” he later says with a wink to a visitor.

        The Kearns-and-Dunn pairing is a prescient one, because if the 21-year-old Kearns continues his development, the Reds may have their most powerful outfield trio since Wally Post, Gus Bell and Frank Robinson were packing fans into Crosley Field in '56.

        Baseball guru Peter Gammons has said the 2001 season will be remembered as Mark McGwire's last and Dunn's first. When ESPN the Magazine did a “Next” feature in its Christmas edition about the coming great athletes, it chose 13; only one was a baseball position player. Dunn was holding a bat and wearing a Reds uniform.

        “That was an honor, but I didn't like the photo they chose,” says Dunn, smiling. “And they took a lot of photos.”

        Last year, the Reds were one player away from being the Tigers of Detroit, where reams of newsprint were devoted to discussing that team's hopeless future. And that one player's name wasn't Ken Griffey Jr.

        Junior is a superstar, and everybody knows it. He's still the guy who puts the people in the seats, an All-Century team outfielder, a bona fide challenger to the 755 career home runs of Henry Aaron.

        “I'm predicting an absolutely monster year for him,” Dunn says. “I like him a lot. He tries to play that hard-(guy) role, but he isn't even close (to being one).”

        What altered last season — when the Reds lost 96 games, including a franchise-record 54 at home — was Dunn. His arrival in July, and the 19 homers he hit in only 244 at-bats, provided some hope that the organization has a clue, that the farm system is fertile, that there may be more players in the pipeline.

        For all the fans' lamentations about the lack of proven, effective starting pitching, and the financial inability to acquire it, the Reds' front-office people still have the fans' confidence. A major reason for that is No.44.

        A number, by the way, that Dunn might turn his back on for his high school baseball number — 10 — currently worn by Reds coach Tim Foli. Eric Davis, who distinguished No.44 in nine seasons as a Red, chided Dunn this past season about it.

        “That's a big number, man,” said Davis, smiling.

        “Yeah, you're right,” responded Dunn.

        But who is the player holding the brick in the Reds' print ads for commemorative bricks at Great American Ball Park?

        There can be no better metaphor. Fifth Third Field in Dayton may be The House that Kearns Built; Safeco Field in Seattle is the House that Junior built. But who is the reason for hope in Great American?

        Does Dunn know how valuable he is to this franchise?

        Has anybody ever told him?

        “No, but if that's the way people feel, well, that's about as big a compliment as you can give (a ballplayer),” Dunn says. “I really don't know what to say to that.”

        The kid has no problem with humility. As a ballplayer, he has faults ... and he has a memory.

        “I was bad here,” says Dunn, referring to Dayton. “I walked too much. I couldn't field. I hadn't played much outfield before.”

        He was booed in Cincinnati, too, for balls he misplayed.

        “I've just got to play,” he says. “That's the only thing that can make me good. I wasn't raised out there (in the outfield).”

        He also can't wait to see how he does with 600 at-bats.

        “I want to prove last year wasn't a fluke,” he says.

        Adam Dunn is hungry, all right. A pretzel ain't gonna cut it. Doritos, either.

Dunn gives fans reason to hope

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Coming up this week
Moeller cited for recruiting
'Obsession' with athletics seen
Punishment rarely meted out
Roundup: Ohio girls
Roundup: Kentucky boys
Roundup: Kentucky girls
Enquirer polls: BOYS BASKETBALL
Enquirer polls: GIRLS BASKETBALL
Ohio boys AP POLL
Indiana Boys AP Poll
Indiana girls AP poll
State poll: Kentucky girls
State poll: Kentucky boys
Schedule: Boys Basketball
Schedule: Girls Basketball

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