Nitkowski's Winding Path Could Lead Back to Flushing Years ago, C.J. Nitkowski completed a kind of triple play for a New York ballplayer. He starred for St. John's and played for the Mets and the Yankees among his eight major league stops in a career that stretched from 1995 through 2005. Nitkowski, a 39-year-old left-hander, is hoping for another chance with the Mets, and it just might happen. With Tim Byrdak lost for six weeks because of knee surgery, the Mets need more left-handed bullpen options and gave Nitkowski a tryout last week. A minor league contract offer could be made soon. "I feel pretty optimistic that we can come to an agreement," Nitkowski's agent, Tom O'Connell, said Monday night. Hopefully this will play out in the next couple of days. For Nitkowski, it would be the first offer from a major league team since 2006, when he spent a year in the Pirates" farm system. He followed that up with two years in Japan, two in South Korea and one nursing his shoulder to health. Nitkowski wrote about his experience with stem-cell treatment - which rejuvenated Bartolo Colon's career - in a first-person account for SI.com last year. Nitkowski pitched in the Dominican Republic this winter, and has dropped his arm angle, with help from the former Mets pitching coach Rick Peterson. If he makes it back to the majors, nearly seven years after his last game, it would be a triumph of perseverance, modern medicine and, of course, that most valuable asset of all: left-handedness.