Roberts back after health scare

Feb 21, 2008 - 7:53 PM FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida (Ticker) -- Brian Roberts returned to the Baltimore Orioles' spring training facility Thursday afternoon after a trip to the emergency room a day earlier, according to a published report.

MLB.com said that the second baseman woke up 4 a.m. on Wednesday morning with what he described as a "very, very, very sharp pain in the stomach" and had to call for an ambulance.

After a slew of tests early that morning, the report said that Roberts returned home at 8:30 a.m. and did not feel better until the next day.

"It just kind of gradually started going away," Roberts said in the report. "I think they think it's a kidney stone, but I didn't have the excruciating pass of it. Mine must've broken up or something. It was more of the onset that was so bad."

The web site also said that Roberts expects to play Friday, but a doctor's appointment later Thursday could change that prognosis.

"I guess they say it can be really painful going down the tract," he said of kidney stones. "I've never had a kid. ... If that's what childbirth feels like, I don't want anything to do with it."

It has been an injury-riddled career for the 30-year-old Roberts, who had a career-threatening dislocated elbow in 2005.

The two-time All-Star also recently was named in Senator George Mitchell's report on steroid use in baseball. Roberts apologized for his transgressions Tuesday after arriving at Orioles camp.