TAMPA — An arbitrator decided in Ryan Braun’s favor and the Milwaukee slugger avoided serving a 50-game suspension for failing a test for performance enhancing drugs.
But he is not a complete winner and now Major League Baseball is a big loser.
Braun, obviously, craved this outcome. He did not want to serve a suspension that would have definitively branded him for the rest of his career as a drug cheat. But he does not walk out of this viewed as a clean player.
A significant portion of fans will recognize that his failed test was not in dispute, but how the test was handled by the collector. Thus, Braun got off on a technicality.
I heard Braun’s defense essentially came down to his sample not being sent to the lab immediately after its collection as is standard procedure. Instead, the collector believed FedEx was closed on a Saturday and stored the sample in his refrigerator for two days before sending it off.
Is it possible the composition of the test changed or the sample was tainted in some way? Perhaps. But I sense the majority of devoted fans will believe that Braun won because of the incompetence of someone else and not because he was pristine.
This will haunt him. Again, not as much as if he actually served the suspension and was found guilty. Nevertheless, it is now part of the legacy of an important player of this era; the guy who just won the 2011 NL MVP.
Look at it this way: Until the past few months, Braun had been held up as a symbol of a cleaner game; of someone who had been tested throughout his minor league and major league career. But he will not be that kind of symbol again and, instead, will have this as part of his permanent record.
However, it is the sport itself that will be most haunted now. At a time when there was some belief being restored that the testing works and that banned drugs were — if not being eliminated — at least being significantly diminished in the sport, there is this.
There is a famous player testing positive and not being punished. There is a feeling that a loophole has been formed and that other players will be able to drive through — be able to risk taking illegal performance enhancers and, if caught, try the Braun defense. Or maybe not exactly the Braun defense, but some defense based on a precedent now being set to actually avoid the suspension.
MLB had been 12-0 in defending performance-enhancing cases before the arbitrator, Shyam Das. In most cases 12-1 would be viewed as a great record. But now this loss feels bigger than all the victories combined.
We are back to wondering how clean the sport is. At a time when MLB was hoping for the good vibe from the opening of spring training. Instead, it has this: The opening of an old wound.