Ex-Mets pitcher opens up about positive PED test: I was ashamed to tell my father

Bartolo Colon’s father was playing Dominoes in the Dominican Republic countryside when his telephone rang.

The year was 2012, two years before Colon had embraced a loveable persona with the Mets. A month and a half earlier, he had tested positive for synthetic testosterone, a banned substance in MLB.

Ashamed by what he’d done, Colon left for the Bahamas with his wife, forced to serve a 50-game suspension. While there, he dreaded having to tell his father.

“What hurt me the most was having to tell my father about my positive test,” Colon said sitting across from Pedro Martinez on the “Alofoke” show, a Dominican-based YouTube show. “We were raised humbly and honestly, and I was ashamed. It took me a month and a half to build up the courage to tell my father. I couldn’t find the way to tell him.”

When Colon’s father finally answered the phone, Colon asked him to go somewhere private. There, he broke the news, but his father didn’t understand. He thought Colon had been caught using another type of illegal drug and was relieved to learn that it was just a performance enhancer.

Colon’s decision to use PEDs cost him a shot at the Hall of Fame — he received just 1.3% of the vote on his first ballot in 2024 — but in his first time opening up about PEDs, all he could recall was the call to his father.

Colon is the winningest Dominican-born pitcher in MLB history. In 565 career games, he posted a 247-188 record with a 4.12 ERA and 2,532 strikeouts — his Hall candidacy was questionable without the banned substance, which he says he took to stay healthy after missing the 2010 season.

“I used it to be able to stay healthy,” Colon said. “It was a bad choice I made, but I don’t regret doing it because I made the decision, I have to live with it.”

Manuel Gomez may be reached at [email protected].