Former Mets 1B Mike Jacobs — who actually started the 2010 season as the Amazins’ Opening Day cleanup hitter — more recently toiling for the Rockies’ Colorado Springs PCL affiliate, achieved a measure of baseball history today, becoming the first player to test positive for human growth hormoneThe New York Times’ Juliet Macur and Michael S. Schmidt provide detail :

Major League Baseball announced Thursday that Jacobs, who was playing for the Class AAA Colorado Springs Sky Sox this season, has been suspended for 50 games for failing the drug test. The Rockies subsequently released him.

Jacobs, 30, is the first professional athlete in the United States to test positive for H.G.H., said a spokesman for the World Anti-Doping Agency. Since the test was introduced in 2004, he is the eighth person to test positive worldwide, the agency said.

In a statement, Jacobs said that he used the drug and that he was looking forward to playing again once his suspension is over. “A few weeks ago, in an attempt to overcome knee and back problems, I made the terrible decision to take H.G.H.,” Jacobs said in the statement. “I immediately stopped a couple of days later after being tested. Taking it was one of the worst decisions I could have ever made, one for which I take full responsibility.”

Jacobs, who was drafted in the 38th round by the Mets in 1999 and played for them, the Florida Marlins and the Kansas City Royals, provided the blood sample tainted with synthetic H.G.H. over the past few months, said a person with knowledge of the results. His blood sample was sent to U.C.L.A.’s Olympic Analytical Laboratory, which is accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency, and scientists there detected H.G.H.