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Back in September, we learned that Orioles outfielder Jay Gibbons was one of the players accused of receiving shipments of steroids and human growth hormone from the raided Signature Pharmacy in Florida. Gibbons later met with baseball's performance enhancing drug investigators, which probably wasn't as enjoyable as this Dugout, and, today, fessed up publicly for the first time in an interview with the Baltimore Sun.

"I am deeply sorry for the mistakes that I have made. I have no excuses and bear sole responsibility for my decisions. Years ago, I relied on the advice of a doctor, filled a prescription, charged the hGH, which is a medication, to my credit card and had only intended to help speed my recovery from my injuries and surgeries. I hope that my family, teammates, fans and [Orioles owner] Peter Angelos and the entire Orioles organization will accept my apologies and that we can all move on."

He was hit with a 15-game suspension for his violation of the drug policy, the same punishment meted out to Royal signee Jose Guillen. Like Gibbons, Guillen was implicated in the purchase of steroids and HGH but never tested positive for either drug. Guillen is appealing the suspension but there's no word on Gibbons' plans.

Other players, like Rick Ankiel and Gary Matthews Jr., who were similarly implicated will not be suspended because the league found "insufficient evidence to determine they committed a doping violation."

I'd imagine that it was the time frame of the drug use that would lead to some players getting suspended while others got away without the slap on the wrist. There were no positive tests to mandate 50-game suspensions but Gibbons and Guillen were both accused of buying the drugs well into the summer of 2005, which is when baseball began suspending players for positive tests. That's also when they banned HGH and Matthews, for one, has been accused of purchasing it in 2004 which would fall outside of that frame.