“It’s hard to understand. Because I’ve been doing everything I normally do. I’ve been watching my diet very carefully. I exercise regularly. My only indulgence, I guess, would be that I eat a lot of frozen yogurt. But it’s nonfat.”
“I promise you, my fellow New Yorkers, that Mayor Giuliani will do everything possible to cleanse this city of this falsified nonfat yogurt.”
– Rudy Giuliani, in The Nonfat Yogurt episode of “Seinfeld“
Do you think Cosmo Kramer will have to testify at Ryan Braun’s appeal hearing?
Because here are the two options facing Milwaukee Brewers fans.
1) Ryan Braun violated baseball’s performance enhancing drug rules, making this one of history’s most disappointing Wisconsin-centric sports stories.
2) Ryan Braun is the innocent and unwitting star in baseball’s version of a new “Seinfeld” episode. Only this time, instead of somebody spilling tainted yogurt into a vial of Rudy Giuliani’s blood, something somehow tainted one of Braun’s specimen cups.
In appealing his dirty test, Braun’s camp is pushing hard for option No. 2. He declared to the Journal Sentinel, “I am completely innocent.” His representatives point to “highly unusual circumstances,” including a clean second test. Moreover, according to this New York Daily News article, there are chain of custody issues for Braun’s suspect test, which showed testosterone levels “insanely high, the highest ever for anyone who has ever taken a test, twice the level of the highest test ever taken.”
We all knew Braun was a man’s man, but that borders on the ridiculous.
And the more ridiculous this case sounds, the more plausible Braun’s defense gets. Because when has Braun ever struck you as a ridiculous guy?
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| Will Brewers fans still celebrate Ryan Braun with the same fervor as before? |
Polished? Sure. Hollywood? Absolutely. Dumb? Never.
But dumb is exactly what he’d have to be to try to cheat in today’s era of baseball testing.
Not just because it’s harder than ever to get away with using performance enhancing drugs. But because getting caught carries such harsh penalties. And being benched for 50 games would be the least of his concerns.
The damage to Braun’s reputation would carry far more weight. Just ask Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez.
And maybe you hadn’t noticed, but Braun has crafted his image with a tad more precision than George Costanza draping himself in velvet. Would he really risk seeing it all crumble to dust?
Drug cheats deserve to have their reputation smeared. I still despise what they’ve done to the game.
They’ve hoodwinked fans. They’ve scammed both their peers who play clean as well as every player from previous generations. And at their worst, they’ve convinced children to ignore the health risks and follow in their cheating footsteps.
If guilty, Braun becomes the next Alex Rodriguez – a supposedly shining example of the next generation of “clean” players whose greatness is no longer guaranteed – and many Brewers fans will never forgive him. Sure, they’ll still cheer his homers and hope he helps Milwaukee to that World Series promised land.
But they’ll also exchange their warm honeymoon embraces for cooler hugs, those of a jilted spouse who stays married because of the kids.
And yet…
He’s not yet guilty.
Let’s repeat that: Ryan Braun is not yet a cheat, and he may never become one.
Frankly, we’re not supposed to know a thing about Braun’s positive test yet. And developments like this are exactly why we’re not supposed to.
Because it’s such a serious thing to brand a player with the mark of a cheat, players facing that fate deserve every chance to clear their name. And they deserve such grace before being publicly crucified on a cross of incomplete facts.
Who leaked the results midway through the process, and why would they do so? Answering those questions is surely atop Commissioner Bud Selig’s to-do list, because leaks threaten the sanctity of the system he so proudly praises. And in the grander scheme of things, that may become a bigger story than Braun’s test results.
But Braun’s fate is what Brewers fans care about. Both the on-field prospects of their team and the ongoing love affair with their hero depend upon it. His appeal holds much appeal.
The story so far gives fans a reason to believe in Braun’s innocence, perhaps more so than anyone accused of such wrongdoing. The closing credits will determine if he’s in the role of villain or vindicated.
It still feels like a “Seinfeld” episode, with one key exception.
Nobody’s laughing.
Feel free to follow me on Twitter, where I tweet as howiemag. And listen to me chat sports with Mitch Teich once a month on WUWM’s “Lake Effect.”
