It's not surprising that former Angels pitcher Bartolo Colón has been suspended for 50 games for using banned drugs as an Oakland A.
What is surprising is the drug the 39-year-old tested positive for: testosterone.
Those who recall the righty spilling out of his Halos uniform might have assumed it would be Fen-Phen.
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Colón in 2005 became the first pitcher to win a Cy Young Award as an Angel since Dean Chance in 1964.
The Dominican went 21-8 with a 3.48 ERA that year, but he also partially tore his rotator cuff pitching against the Yankees in the '05 playoffs, spent all of '06 and the DL and after a middling '07 with the Halos in '07 signed with Boston in February '08.
The one-time Indian, Expo and Yankee–and two-time White Sox–signed with the A's in January and had compiled a 10-9 record with a 3.43 ERA before Wednesday's suspension. Colón had been red-hot since the All-Star break, going 4-2 with a 2.63 ERA in seven starts.
He issued this statement:
“I apologize to the fans, to my teammates and to the Oakland A's. I accept responsibility for my actions and I will serve my suspension as required by the Joint Drug Program.”
Colón becomes the second Bay Area baseball star to be suspended for testosterone in a week, as the Giants' Melky Cabrera also saw his season end.
At least Bart now has time to diet.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.