Baseball Bans Yet Another Player For Drugs

In the second Major League Baseball drug-related suspension this week, Oakland Athletics team member Bartolo Colon has received a whopping 50-game suspension for testing positive for an excessive level of testosterone, following suspension of San Francisco Giants outfielder Melky Cabrera earlier this week. Despite Major League Baseball instituting drug tests for steroids and other performance enhancing substitutes nearly a decade ago and recently instituting an even more stringent regimen of testing policies, Colon is the fifth player this year to be suspended over performance enhancing drugs. The New York Times reports that in April 2010, Colon underwent an unusual procedure in the Dominican Republic to help repair a torn rotator cuff and ligament damage by having fat and bone marrow stem cells extracted from his body and then injected into his elbow and shoulder. Baseball officials interviewed Dr. Joseph R. Purita, an orthopedic surgeon based out of Florida who oversaw the procedure, as well as a second doctor involved in the case, Leonel Liriano, but both maintain that Colon did not receive any performance enhancing drugs. “The last time I saw him was last year after the season, when he was on vacation in the Dominican Republic,” says Liriano. “He came to my office because he was having a stomach problem.”  Colon has publicly apologized since the suspension was announced and has accepted full responsibility.