BLUE JAY GROUNDED
First baseman Chris Colabello suspended 80 games after failing drug test.
It was one of the most inspirational stories in baseball last year. Now it all lies in ruins.
A heap of ashes swirling around Chris Colabello and, to some extent, casting a pall on the Toronto Blue Jays as well, certainly creating a roster conundrum.
The personable platooning first baseman and designated hitter, a kind of baseball Horatio Alger whose decade-long minor-league persistence was finally rewarded, is out of the game now — for at least 80 games. The offence is clearcut, the sentence irreversible.
Colabello, 32, tested positive for a mouthful of an anabolic steroid — dehydrochlormethyltestosterone. Manager John Gibbons didn’t even try to wrap his tongue around it when confirming the shocking news a few hours before Friday night’s 8-5 loss against the Oakland Athletics. Dismay and befuddlement were writ on the skipper’s face.
“I love the guy. He’s fought through a lot in life and he’ll fight this. He’s been a big part of our team. There isn’t a guy in that room that doesn’t love him.”
But it sounded very much like a requiem. Colabello’s career might be over, a major-league ballplayer who flashed brightly for one enchanted season and then burned up amidst the sulfurous stench of a performance-enhancing drug that has its roots in East German chemical labs. How could he? “On March 13, I got one of the scariest and most definitely the least expected phone calls of my entire life,” Colabello explained in a statement released through the players association.
It was the association which informed him, during spring training, that he had tested positive for a banned substance, traces detected in his urine. Random testing.
“I have spent every waking moment since that day trying to find an answer as to why or how.
“The only thing I know is that I would never compromise the integrity of the game of baseball. I love this game too much!”
He may, indeed, have loved the game too much, during all those years it didn’t love him back enough.
What would you do, staring at the wrong side of 30, and wallowing in the minors, undrafted, seven long seasons of independent ball, completely out of the prospect-sifting loop? This is baseball, after all, with a history steeped in steroids, connected to some of the sport’s biggest stars. What about the bush-league journeyman running out of time?
Notably, Colabello doesn’t offer any outright denial in his statement. He can’t. The positive result is fact. He merely expresses bewilderment and pleads for no rush to judgment. But there hasn’t been a rush. For the players association to publicize the outcome means that both the A and B test have come back positive. And, as teammate and close friend Kevin Pillar disclosed later in the day, Colabello has already exhausted the appeal process.
Pillar knew about the positive result back in March, though not all teammates were aware until yesterday when Colabello himself called a clubhouse meeting.
“Like everyone else in there, I was surprised, shocked,” said Russell Martin afterward. “You care for your teammates and any time they have to go through something like this, you want to be there for them.
“He looked like he’d been blindsided by it.”
Most players refused to speak about the startling news when approached, refusing at first to reveal why a team meeting was called until the suspension was verified by the players union and the club. “I don’t know enough to talk about it,” said Jose Bautista, who is a player rep to the association.
The Jays have never before been implicated in performance-enhancing drugs, though known steroid scofflaws such as Jose Canseco have worn the Toronto uniform. The team meeting — Gibbons and his coaching staff attended as well — lasted only about 15 minutes. When the clubhouse doors opened to reporters, Colabello was nowhere in sight.
“In some ways, I feel like Chris being able to tell everybody lifted a huge burden off him,” suggested Pillar. “It’s an extremely tough secret to hold on to for a long time.’’
Adding: “The game’s already hard enough as is. Him trying to go out on the field and trying to hit with that 800-pound gorilla on his back — I can’t even imagine what he was going through.’’
The road less travelled to The Show, Pillar described Colabello’s slow ascent. It was certainly the stuff of local baseball lore, as Colabello established himself here as both a player with hitting bop and a thoughtful go-to clubhouse quote.
Lawyers, agent, lab technicians — these have been features of the off-field roster Colabello has been contending with lately, Pillar pointed out. It has weighed on the player enormously and might go some distance toward explaining the peculiarly limp start the New England native has had to this season — hitting a threadbare .069 after his breakout 2015 campaign, during which he hit .321 with 15 home runs and 54 RBIs in the regular season, before playing a significant factor in the post-season, and emerging as possibly the most articulate voice of both joy and regret in that clubhouse last October.
But he’s been far off his game, from the spring bivouacs to now.
“I can only imagine the amount of stress,” continued Pillar. “We’re not talking about a couple of games here. We’re talking about a person’s integrity. We’re talking about a person’s career. He’s not exactly the youngest player around either.
“These are all things that concern him. This might be the end of baseball for him.’’
Pillar was adamant; he believes, without a shred of doubt, Colabello’s claim, to him, of never knowingly ingesting a banned substance. Pillar emphasized that Colabello takes his fitness seriously, brings his own protein-shake powder on the road, and has been exacting about what he puts in his mouth.
But we’ve heard too many of these disavowals and non mea culpas before. Colabello may not seem the type for duplicity, yet who is?
He wouldn’t jeopardize a career so resolutely acquired, so precious, Pillar insists. Yet someone else, close to the team, wonders if the temptation for a kick-start call-up in Toronto was too seductive. What would Colabello have to lose, if he got caught, say, last season. He didn’t have a big-league career yet.
“I’m disappointed that it happened,” said Gibbons, sadly. “But I kind of got a special bond with the kid. I was the manager here when he made it. He’s a unique guy. This hurts me and obviously hurts him.”
They care for him a great deal, in the clubhouse and in the front office. This is wrenching, though.
Colabello: “I hope that before anyone passes judgment on me they can take a look at the man that I am, and everything that I have done to get where I am in my career.”
The taste of ashes.