I don't want to call Nitkowski, who played with eight major league teams, a hero. That's too dramatic. But in a period when we hear about the bad guys like McGwire and Clemens, Nitkowski is one of the people who actually turned their backs on steroids.
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There was no dramatic or honorable reason for what he did. His caution was rooted in old-fashioned fright. "What ultimately swayed me from using them was I was concerned about getting caught," he said.
Nitkowski wanted to make it clear he's not sitting in judgment of other players who did use. Yet Nitkowski's case shows that while many baseball players did use steroids, there was a non-cheating group that didn't.
Here is one of the interesting parts of Nitkowski's story: He still utilizes McNamee's workout regimen and is still friends with him.
One of the reasons Nitkowski is talking about McNamee now is that he feels players, fans and the media are using McNamee as a scapegoat. And Nitkowski is probably right.
"I would like to see some of these guys named in the Mitchell Report defend Mac," said Nitkowski. "He wasn't pushing these drugs. Players were asking him for them. Not once in all the years I have known Mac did he approach me about steroids or HGH. I wish one of these players in the (Mitchell) report would speak up and tell the truth about what they asked Mac to do."
What Nitkowski says happened with McNamee is this:
Players would approach McNamee about using steroids and he would discourage it. But once McNamee saw that the players were demanding them and going to use them anyway, McNamee facilitated their use.
McNamee figured, Nitkowski explains, he would monitor his clients' use to avoid them misusing or abusing the drugs.
That makes sense as well. Why would a trainer, who makes a living off of working with athletes, want them to get hurt, thus ruining the trainer's only way to earn money?
I asked Nitkowski if he regrets not using steroids or HGH. It's a fascinating question because it seems that what these performance-enhancers do is turn a great athlete into a superb one if even for a short time. Nitkowski could have probably earned millions of extra dollars if he had decided to take Winstrol.
"I look back at my career and I wonder if I did use them would my fastball have gone up 3 or 4 mph?" he said. "I don't know. I don't know if my career would be any different. But I don't have any regrets."
He shouldn't, because Nitkowski is one of the few good guys in the sport who refused to use.
