HOUSTON (AP) — In 2018, Jon Singleton requested his release from the Houston Astros after being suspended 100 games following a third failed marijuana test while in the minors, choosing to walk away from baseball rather than face the suspension and everything that came with it.
“I just didn’t want to play baseball anymore,” he told The Associated Press earlier this month. “I knew I had to serve 100 games, and serving 100 games with this organization and the position I was in was not going to be a good thing for me. It was going to take me down a dark road. So, at that point, I just wanted to be done with baseball and kind of get away from everything.”
A year later, marijuana was removed from MLB’s banned substances list. It would be a couple more years before the left-handed slugger returned to organized baseball in the Mexican League.
He returned to the majors for the first time since 2015 this season, first with Milwaukee and now back with the Astros. The former top prospect, now 31, wonders what his career could have been if marijuana — currently legal in 23 states — was taken off the banned substances list sooner.
“I definitely think the way things are handled now, my career would have definitely been a lot different,” he said. “From the way the players see things, the way staff sees things, the way it’s even handled in the commissioner’s office, my career definitely would have been a lot different.”
He’s looking to find success in the majors for the first time this season and is getting extended playing time at first base with José Abreu out with an injury. Singleton starred for the Astros in his first home game Friday night with two homers and a career-high five RBIs.
His career to this point has been noteworthy mostly because of his repeated marijuana suspensions.
His first positive test came in June 2012 and the second in December of that year. He was suspended 50 games for each of those and spent a month in a rehabilitation center after the second one.
Before the 2014 season, he shared his struggles with marijuana in a candid interview with the AP.
“At this point it’s pretty evident to me that I’m a drug addict,” he said then. “I don’t openly tell everyone that, but it’s pretty apparent to myself. I know that I enjoy smoking weed, I enjoy being high and I can’t block that out of my mind that I enjoy that.”
Despite his suspensions, the Astros signed him to a $10 million, five-year contract that summer just before he made his major league debut June 3. At that time, major league players were not tested for marijuana.
He was unable to replicate his minor league success in the majors and played in just 114 games for the Astros in 2014 and 2015. He was soon back in the minors — and subject to marijuana testing again.
He spent 2016 in Triple-A and was in Double-A the entire 2017 season before being slapped with his last suspension.
The stigma of his positive tests dogged him for years, and he said many made assumptions about him because of them.
“People thought I was a bad person. I had bad character,” he said. “People didn’t think I deserved the success I had, the money that I had. I was definitely vilified.”
Though plenty of others were suspended for positive drug tests, Singleton felt like the poster child for baseball’s ban on minor league marijuana use.
