Never meet your heroes, they will only disappoint you

a blatantly untrue statement that still occasionally applies

The first Hall of Famer I ever met was at a baseball card shop on NE Sandy Boulevard in Portland, Oregon.

I didn’t know who the guy was, but my mom took us there to get some autographs and meet a famous ballplayer.

My brother and I were huge baseball fans and maybe even bigger fans of baseball cards.

I’m placing this event in the summer of 1985 give or take a year.

“What do you think of that Gooden kid?” the old man asked me. I shrugged. Dwight Gooden was the most dominant pitcher in the game and it wasn’t even close.

“Do you think he can last, just depending on that fastball?” Gooden also had the most dominating curveball of the day, perhaps better than Nolan Ryan.

“I don’t think he throws as fast as some of the guys in my day.”

What does an eight-year-old say to an old man who is bagging on one of his baseball heroes of the time, a man also known as Dr. K?

Nothing more, I figured. I just moved through the line and got my Bob Feller card signed by the man himself.

The Heater from Van Meter (…