Selig Rules Gooden Can’t Return Yet : Baseball: Acting commissioner denies pitcher’s request for a shortened suspension.

Dwight Gooden will have to wait until next year to return to baseball.

Bud Selig, baseball’s acting commissioner, has rejected Gooden’s request to shorten his one-year suspension from baseball for violating his drug after-care program, the Cy Young Award winner said Friday in the Record of Bergen County.

“[Selig] said that with only six weeks left in the season, it was better for me to keep working on my after-care program,” Gooden said in an interview from his home in St. Petersburg, Fla. “I know it was a tough decision for him, but that means I’ll just keep working even harder to make it back next year.”

Last week, Gooden wrote to Selig and asked him to come to Florida to look at his rehabilitation program. The former Met starter also was considering filing a grievance, but decided against it when team owners fired arbitrator George Nicolau.

Gooden, a free agent, was not expected to return to the majors this season, especially after missing four drug tests.

Selig consulted other members of the executive council, as well as psychiatrists from Major League Baseball and the players’ association, who all have examined Gooden in the past month.

Gooden’s fastball was clocked at 95 m.p.h. Thursday, the newspaper said, and quoted him as saying, “If I was allowed back this year, the Yankees would have won.”

The pitcher had talked of joining his former Mets teammate, Darryl Strawberry, on the New York Yankees.

“Our hope was realistic, because Dwight really does have his life together at this point,” Gooden’s agent, Ray Negron, told the newspaper.

Negron and spokesmen for Major League Baseball were unavailable for comment Friday.

Gooden said he plans to play winter ball in the Dominican Republic.