Past catches up to 'anabolic prospect'

Naulty knows he took wrong path by using steroids

By Jack Etkin, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published December 21, 2007 at 12:45 a.m.

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Photo by Ahmad Terry / The Rocky

Dan Naulty says he started taking steroids because he couldn't gain weight as he began his pro career. One day, he said, he'll tell his children about the transgressions.

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The former relief pitcher named on pages 232 and 233 of the Mitchell Report lives in Littleton these days and is working on a master's degree in biblical studies at the Iliff School of Theology.

That will be the second master's degree for Dan Naulty, who received one from Trinity College & Theological Seminary in Newburgh, Ind.

He's following an academic path he hopes will culminate with a doctorate in biblical studies and the New Testament. Naulty is an ordained pastor and has done pastoral work in California.

Naulty's baseball career ended in 1999. He lasted nearly four injury-plagued seasons in the big leagues - three years, 147 days of major league service time, to be exact - mostly with the Minnesota Twins before a final year with the New York Yankees.

Had Naulty not started using steroids almost at the outset of his professional career, he's well aware how many days he would have spent in the majors.

"Zero," Naulty said. "I would've never made it out of (Single-) A ball. There's no way. I never would have gotten out of that level of baseball because I didn't have enough stuff to do that."

Unlike most current and former players cited in former Sen. George Mitchell's 409-page report, Naulty, who turns 38 next month, cooperated fully with the investigators during a two-hour telephone conversation in January. He assumes they called him not suspecting him of any steroids use but simply because he was in the majors during the period being investigated.

Naulty had nothing to hide. His baseball career was long over, and as the report says, he "repeatedly expressed remorse" for using steroids.

He acquired them on the black market from bodybuilders in his native Southern California.

Naulty gained weight, added plenty of zip to his fastball and transformed himself from an organizational afterthought into "an anabolic prospect."

"I stole people's jobs," Naulty said. "That, for me, has been a very convicting position to be in because I started sharing the story in 2000. The Mitchell Report was just an extension of my confession, but I've shared this story probably 80 to 100 times since 2000 in a variety of Christian communities, from small all the way to thousands of people."

Looking for an edge

Naulty recalled making the Twins to start the season in 1996. They finished the exhibition season at Coors Field and Naulty got there at the expense of reliever Mike Trombley, the last player cut before the Twins broke camp in Florida.

"He's that metaphor of all those people that I steamrolled, from LaTroy Hawkins and Dan Serafini to Mike Trombley and David Riggs, so many guys that I played with throughout the process that were trying to do this legitimately whereas . . . I was using amphetamines and in the offseason I was using steroids and by night I was an alcoholic," Naulty said.

"In Mike's case or LaTroy's case, these guys went on to have pretty good careers and did well. But at the same time, I still took innings from them. I took the potential of getting to that place quicker. I took the possibility of getting to the big leagues out of other people's hands, period. They didn't even get a chance because I was there."

Naulty went to high school in Huntington Beach, Calif., moved on to junior college and finally Cal State Fullerton. The Twins drafted him in the 14th round in 1992 and sent him to Kenosha (Wis.) in the low Single-A Midwest League. He entered professional baseball a 22-year-old beanpole at 6-foot-6 and 185 pounds.

"The message I had been getting since I was a freshman in high school was gain weight, gain weight," Naulty said. "I couldn't. I tried everything under the sun to gain weight, and I couldn't."

Naulty went 0-1 with a 5.50 ERA in six games for Kenosha and made two starts before a hip pointer sidelined him in late July.

His fastball was in the 85- to 87 mph range; not enough, he realized, for him to last in professional baseball.

'Amazing' results

After that season, Naulty returned to Orange County and realized, "I've got to make a decision."

He went into various gyms in the area, sought out bodybuilders who, at the time, were strangers, said he needed to gain weight fast and was told drugs were the answer to his plight.

"My question was somewhat loaded," Naulty said. "I knew the answer. They directed me that way. I started using. Within two weeks, I was gaining weight and putting up weight (in the gym) I'd never put up in my lifetime.

"And over the course of the next 21/2 years, I went from 185 (pounds) to 235, 245, and my fastball went from 86, 87 (mph) to 94, 96 (mph). It was an amazing, miraculous change in my body. And I don't say that in a good sense; I say that in a negative sense."

This was a time before baseball had any list of banned substances or drug testing. The routine became established. Naulty would lose weight during the season and gain it back in the offseason while using steroids.

There was a physical price to pay. The extra muscle put a strain on Naulty's body, and he began tearing tendons.

A torn right triceps put Naulty on the disabled list in 1997 from May 26 through Sept. 1.

Ultimately, Naulty's time with the Twins ended after the 1998 season, one that came to an early finish when he tore his right groin and was placed on the disabled list from July 12 through the end of the season.

While rehabilitating that summer at the Twins facility in Fort Myers, Fla., Naulty contacted his bodybuilding friends who had supplied him with steroids and was introduced to human growth hormone.

"I said, 'I need to heal myself,' " Naulty said. " 'I'm 235 pounds. I don't need anymore weight. I need to get healthy because I'm breaking apart at the limbs.'

"They said HGH is the new kid on the block and in a sense it'll heal you. I ended up starting a cycle of HGH over the next five or six months."

Life-changing decision

The Twins traded Naulty to the Yankees for a minor leaguer in November 1998. Shortly before Christmas, Naulty flew to New York for a physical and said his groin and everything else "checked out."

At that point, Naulty had stopped taking steroids. He went to spring training in 1999 with the Yankees, then the reigning world champions and winners of two of the past three World Series, and for the first time since 1992 with Kenosha, he was competing without the aid of steroids or HGH but was using amphetamines.

"My velocity dropped," Naulty said. "I was down to 88 (mph). . . . I had dropped 5 to 8 miles an hour. But I was pitching really well. I was getting people out."

Naulty went 1-0 with a 4.38 ERA in 33 games for the Yankees. That season, he said he "was asking the meaning-of-life type questions" and Christian members of the Yankees let him know if he wanted help, they were ready.

Naulty said the group included Joe Girardi, now the Yankees manager, Mariano Rivera, Scott Brosius, Chad Curtis, Jason Grimsley and Andy Pettitte.

The latter two were cited in the Mitchell Report. Pettitte subsequently admitted he twice used HGH but not steroids. Grimsley, who admitted using steroids and HGH, had his Arizona home raided in June 2006 by federal agents.

"It was a crew that clearly was not claiming perfection but was claiming that, 'We need God and we're inviting you to be a part of that if you like.' So during the season it was almost a Jekyll and Hyde type of thing. During the day, I'd get to hang out with these guys and get to ask the tough questions about religion and life and baseball. And then during the night, I'd be the single major league baseball player playing for the New York Yankees.

"After the World Series, when I came home, I made the decision to really live out my faith. And that ended my baseball career because I realized I was forcing this issue. I was making myself be a major league baseball player when I realized that God really didn't want me to be a baseball player."

While Naulty was playing, he said, he had no pangs of conscience, no mental tussles about the road he was traveling to stay in the majors.

"What I had in the big leagues was, 'I'm here, and I'm making a lot of money, so do whatever you got to do to stay here,' " Naulty said.

"And that was basically what my mind-set was. I didn't have any conviction about what was taking place until I became a Christian and until I really started evaluating what I was doing in my life. And that didn't start until 2000."

'I didn't do this right'

Naulty met his future wife, Cassie, in church in California, and they were married in 2002 and moved to Colorado in 2005 from Orange County. The couple has two sons - Hunter, 3, and Taylor, 1.

At some point, Naulty will have to tell his sons about his baseball days. They will be able to peruse his statistical history in the majors - a record of 5-5 and 4.54 ERA, 1602/3 innings pitched in 130 games and, it turns out, an unrevealing bottom line.

"Sadly, I will have to explain this very story to my kids when they get old enough," Naulty said. "So they understand where I stand on this whole thing and so that they understand, if it were up to me, you would literally cross my name out of these record books because you cheated and you need to understand that there are significant consequences to making these choices.

"I didn't do this right. I cheated. I screwed people. I lied. I did everything you possibly could do all for the sake of money and potential fame. That's not a good thing."

etkinj@RockyMountainNews.com

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