Guess what? Last time Ryan Braun was lying. This time he wants you to believe he’s telling the truth.
The Brewers slugger and part-time character assassin, who acknowledged he had made “mistakes” when he accepted a 65-game suspension from Major League Baseball last month for his use of performance-enhancing drugs, came cleaner — just not completely clean — yesterday when he issued a statement explaining he took a cream and lozenge containing banned substances while recuperating from an injury.
“It was a huge mistake for which I am deeply ashamed and I compounded the situation by not admitting my mistakes immediately,” Braun said in the long-winded statement released by the Brewers.
Nowhere in his statement did Braun, who chose to release the statement rather than face questions from the media, say where he got the banned substances or whether he knowingly took them.
Braun, who was named NL MVP in 2011 when he hit .332 with 33 homers and 111 RBIs, tested positive for elevated testosterone that October, but his 50-game suspension was overturned the following spring when an arbitrator ruled the urine sample was mishandled.
The next day Braun, in what should have been an Emmy-nominated performance at the Brewers spring training site, vehemently professed his innocence and, without getting into specifics, questioned the character of the collector of his urine sample, Dino Laurenzi Jr.
It was recently learned Braun, who is Jewish, told teammates Laurenzi was an anti-Semite. He even accused Laurenzi — horror of horrors — of being a Cubs fan.
In yesterday’s statement, Braun apologized to Laurenzi, commissioner Bud Selig, Brewers fans, baseball fans and his Milwaukee teammates, who were all very publicly in his corner .
“I have no one to blame but myself. I know that over the last year and a half I made some serious mistakes, both in the information I failed to share during my arbitration hearing and the comments I made to the press afterwards,” Braun said. “I have disappointed the people closest to me — the ones who fought for me because they truly believed me all along. I kept the truth from everyone. For a long time, I was in denial and convinced myself that I had not done anything wrong.”
Braun originally declined to answer any questions when interviewed in June by baseball investigators in the Biogensis probe. But he said he changed his mind soon after deciding it was “time to come to grips with the truth.”
Nevertheless, Braun said he never saw the evidence baseball had against him, adding he didn’t need to “because I knew what I had done.”
After he accepted his suspension on July 22 — 50 games for the drug infraction and 15 games for his conduct at the time of the grievance — Braun was heavily criticized by players around the major leagues.
Braun was the first player fingered in the Biogenesis scandal to accept his suspension. Fourteen players were eventually suspended and all, with the exception of Alex Rodriguez, have accepted their punishments.
Braun is being sued for defamation by a former college friend Ralph Sasson, who aided him in his appeal two years ago and initially had a hard time collecting the $5,000 Braun allegedly agreed to pay him.
According to court filings, Sasson is trying to get Braun to admit to using PEDs since his days at the University of Miami. He also wants Braun to admit he “violated NCAA rules of amateurism by accepting cash and check payments,’’ and engaged in “academic misconduct.’’
Oh, and Sasson also would like everyone to know Braun not only cheats on the field but off it, accusing him of infidelity “in every amorous relationship’’ he has had, including with his fiancé, model Larisa Fraser.