Steroid Nation: C.J. Nitkowski, former pitcher, defends McNamee

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C.J. Nitkowski, former pitcher, defends McNamee

CJ Nitkowski, a former pitcher who flirted with steroid use defends trainer Brian McNamee, who now faces a huge media-legal fight. Story at the Chicago Sports.

Nitkowski considered steroids when he was cut from the Houston Astro's staff. His trainer Brian McNamee worked the pitcher out with Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte. However that wasn't enough. The Astros cut Nitkowski. Nitkowski was home the night his 2 year-old fell into a swimming pool; the pitcher saved his son from drowning. A tangled story, but Nitkowski considers his bad luck turned into good fortune: he reasons if he 'roided up he would have been on the team, and not around to save his son. (was that paragraph all Hemmingway or what?)

Sine then the former pitcher has quietly defended McNamee, the trainer who implicated Clemens and Pettitte.

   He says now, "no doubt at all" that steroids provide "a tremendous physical and mental advantage."

   McNamee advised him against it (steroid use). Nitkowski thought some more and decided he was too scared to do it.

"I wasn't concerned about getting caught by Major League Baseball," he said. "That was a non-issue. And I wasn't overly concerned by the health issue. My concern was possession and purchase, which were illegal."...

C.J. Nitkowski was not named in the Mitchell report. He is free to ignore it. But Nitkowski still views everything he does through that prism, and he can't let himself ignore it. So he has taken a most unpopular position.

   Nitkowski defends McNamee to anybody who will listen.

"He's not perfect," Nitkowski said. "He's made some mistakes, no doubt. But I challenge people to look closer and ask: What is his motivation for lying? It's difficult for him and his family to hear [the accusations]. He is not a steroid pusher."