• Hi Guest, want to participate in the discussions, keep track of read/unread posts and more? Create your free account and increase the benefits of your WyoNation.com experience today!

Ryan Braun Saga: Thoughts?

McPeachy

McPeachy

Well-known member
So, last year's NL MVP was caught doping (using PED's). He was banned for the first 50 games of the 2012 MLB season, and his 2011 MVP season (and award) was being questioned. Then he appeals the ban / decision, and wins. On this technicality:

"According to one of the sources, the collector, after getting Braun's sample, was supposed to take the sample to a FedEx office for shipping. But sources said the collector thought the FedEx office was closed because it was late on a Saturday and felt the sample wouldn't get shipped until Monday."

Further...from the ESPN article:

"Two sources told ESPN that Braun testified he never used performance-enhancing drugs, but that he and his representatives never disputed the fact that a second test on his urine sample showed exogenous testosterone in his body, meaning it came from an outside source."
 
At first it seemed like the media was sensationalizing this as if he had really been proven innocent, when really it looks like he just pays his lawyers well.
 
MrTitleist said:
Getting off on a technicality doesn't make him any less guilty.
Click to expand...

I do not know how the science works and I couldn't care less about the Brewers. But, for what it is worth, the "technicalities" are usually in place in order to make sure that the scientific part of the tests are reliable. If the problem was the the sample was setting around for a few days before it was sent into the lab, then there were a number of things that could have gone wrong with the sample or how the tests worked upon the sample.
 
MLB Really screwed themselves on this one. It shows how unreliable their highly touted drug testing program really is. From this point on anyone found guilty can question the validity of their test and probably win an appeal. The day that Bud Selig is out as commish of baseball cannot come soon enough.

Just look at NASCAR. They plant drugs and money on Jeremy Mayfield just to prove their drug testing works :lol:
 
I DONT CARE. all medicine is performance enhancing! You feel sick, now I feel better. You wouldn't have went 5-5 if you still had your flu symptoms. Hey, the knee is a little bummed, here is cortisone, a steroid. Now you can play. You have peaked in the weight room no matter how hard you try, try this, your bench just went up. You trying to increase your red blood count, you better not dope, but if you build an altitude chamber you can still trick your body into producing more red blood cells, but it's "legal". This is all dumb.
 
laxwyo said:
I DONT CARE. all medicine is performance enhancing! You feel sick, now I feel better. You wouldn't have went 5-5 if you still had your flu symptoms. Hey, the knee is a little bummed, here is cortisone, a steroid. Now you can play. You have peaked in the weight room no matter how hard you try, try this, your bench just went up. You trying to increase your red blood count, you better not dope, but if you build an altitude chamber you can still trick your body into producing more red blood cells, but it's "legal". This is all dumb.
Click to expand...

Lax, I'm going to take issue with your opinion. As a distance runner, I've read and watched a lot of endurance athletes go through this scrutiny. Some, like Lance Armstrong, never get caught. Some runners lose their olympic medals and getted banned from the sport for a few years. The question is: why are ped's illegal and how much do they help? There is an excellent book called Faust's gold, which details the results of East German swimmers after they dominated the olympics in the 70's. They were given testosterone as teenagers (they didn't know what they were taking) and by the time they were in their 30's, most had contracted serious liver and kidney problems. Some died of heart attacks, like Flo-jo, who also was believed to have take testosterone.

Epo, testosterone, and human growth hormone have serious side effects. The altitude tent you refer to has mostly been abandoned as having very little positive effect on performance. Simply put, if you don't live at altitude, getting in an altitude tent a few hours a day doesn't help. That's why so many world class runners and triathletes train in Boulder.

Cortisone shots don't really enhance performance. They reduce inflammation. But cortisone can destroy tendons and ligaments so it's not without problems. Athletic organizations have to make judgement calls as to what they want to allow in their sport. Is it fair for Lance Armstrong to hire the best drug doctor who gives him just the right amount of ped so that he never tests positive? Supposedly, about 90 percent of cyclists use peds.

I think the problem with ped's is that, if legal, most athletes will take them and worry about the consequences later. So I think we have to protect the athlete from him or herself.
 
This isn't over yet... It's going to get ugly. Lawyers are now involved.

The increasingly combative dispute between Major League Baseball and Ryan Braun grew louder Tuesday when Dino Laurenzi Jr., the drug test collector who handled Braun’s urine sample in October, said that he followed protocol when he took the sample home instead of sending it directly to a testing laboratory.

“I followed the same procedure in collecting Mr. Braun’s sample as I did in the hundreds of other samples I collected under the program,”Laurenzi said in a statement, referring to the drug testing program administered by Major League Baseball and the players union. “At no point did I tamper in any way with the samples.”

Laurenzi, a drug test collector for Comprehensive Drug Testing, the company hired by Major League Baseball and the players union to collect samples from players, has been at the center of a storm since Friday, when Braun raised questions in a news conference about why his sample and those of two other players were not immediately taken to a FedEx shipping office and spent the weekend in Laurenzi’s house.

Laurenzi’s decision to take the samples home and the resulting gap in the chain of custody were the main reasonsan arbitrator reversed Braun’s 50-game suspension for failing the drug test. Braun is the first major league player known to have won an appeal of a suspension for violating the league’s drug policy.

In a statement, Laurenzi said he followed established protocol by taking the samples home because by the time he left Miller Park that Saturday in October, the last FedEx flights of the day had left. It was better to keep the samples in a secure location than leave them in a FedEx office, where they could have been tampered with or not properly refrigerated.

His employer, C.D.T., has told collectors to keep samples in their possession when they are unable to be shipped, Laurenzi said.

“The protocol has been in place since 2005 when I started with C.D.T., and there have been other occasions when I have had to store samples in my home for at least one day, all without incident,” Laurenzi said in his statement.

Without naming Laurenzi directly, Braun suggested there were questions about his character and the possibility that Laurenzi or his son, who accompanied him to the stadium that day, might have doctored the sample or inadvertently compromised it.

“There were a lot of things that we learned about the collector, about the collection process, about the way the entire thing works, that made us very concerned and very suspicious about what could have actually happened,” Braun said at the news conference Friday, at the Brewers’ training camp in Phoenix.
Braun’s veiled allegations have “caused great emotional distress for me and my family,” Laurenzi said. “I have worked hard my entire life, have performed my job duties with integrity and professionalism, and have done so with respect to this matter and all other collections in which I have participated.”

Laurenzi has hired Boyd Johnson, a prominent lawyer, to represent him.
Click to expand...
 
1. Don't care about baseball (unless just playing it with friends/family).
2. I took Cortizone once for my shoulder, last time I'll ever take it. I only found out afterwards that I was already hyper-flexible, and the corizone made my joints that much looser (especially my knees).
3. Baseball and soccer are boring to watch, but are fun enough when playing.
 
fromolwyoming said:
1. Don't care about baseball (unless just playing it with friends/family).
2. I took Cortizone once for my shoulder, last time I'll ever take it. I only found out afterwards that I was already hyper-flexible, and the corizone made my joints that much looser (especially my knees).
3. Baseball and soccer are boring to watch, but are fun enough when playing.
Click to expand...
This has less to do with Baseball and more to do with how drug testing is handled in professional sports and even on down to amateur sports. Baseball gets the most attention since we have seen the effects that out of control PED use had on the sport of baseball. You literally had average batters now becoming power hitters. Those routine pop flys were now going out of the park.

The ramifications of what might come out of drug testing and ensuing lawsuits is going to be interesting to follow.
 
Ah. Druggies. Outside of prescriptions, and maybe tylenol/ibprofen/cold medicine for when it's needed, I've never seen the point to drugs, personally. Especially "performance enhancing" drugs. If you can't improve yourself without taking those, I don't see the point to being an athlete at all.

Call me hardass on this, but that's my view on such things.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top