Clearly, it was the end of the line. Not to mention, he was almost grotesquely out of shape, not that he wore a Body by Pujols in his best days.
Colon was Joe Blanton XXX with better mechanics and a wicked fastball. But all that weight, all that effort it took him to throw in the mid-90s had worn him down.
In other words, he was exactly the kind of train wreck a Boca Raton, Fla., orthopedic surgeon named Dr. Joseph R. Purita looks for. A perfect candidate for stem-cell surgery that would do for fat and bone-marrow cells what Dr. Robert Jobe did for the ulnar-tendon transplant that was named for the guinea pig, Dodgers lefthander Tommy John.
Dr. Purita had done successful stem-cell surgery before, but he had included injections of human growth hormone - banned by Major League Baseball. The idea of the HGH was not to turn the patient into Barry Bonds - indeed, Dr. Purita claims he has never used HGH on a baseball or football player - it was to hasten the healing process.
He knew that once Colon asked one of his Dominican Republic associates if he could try the procedure as a career last resort, it would have to be done without HGH. MLB's knee-jerk reaction to the new procedure would be extreme enough without having to ask the PED cops for an exemption.
A team of stem-cell docs headed by Dr. Purita performed the surgery on Colon in the Dominican Republic last summer. They harvested fat - no problem there - and healthy cells from the pitcher's bone marrow and infused it into his bum elbow and ravaged shoulder. Dr. Purita worked pro bono.
The rest is exciting history. The Yankees sent a delegation to the DR last winter and they were amazed that Colon, hardly in pitching shape, was throwing fastballs in the low 90s.
