News last week that Major League Baseball suspended Milwaukee Brewers star and former National League MVP Ryan Braun for 65 games for testing positive for performance enhancing drugs sent shock waves through the baseball community.
Braun, who escaped punishment in the winter of 2012 after an arbitrator ruled that his positive test was nullified because the test collector didn’t handle the package correctly, rightfully got suspended this time after MLB officials discovered that embattled Biogenesis founder Tony Bosch had supplied Braun with PEDs. Braun couldn’t escape on a technicality last week as Bosch handed MLB paperwork that evidenced Braun’s use of a banned substance.
Braun’s suspension was the right move for a professional sports league that has been fighting the use of PEDs since the late 1990s when fans learned that Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa ”“ who electrified crowds in 1998 with their in-season home run race ”“ cheated to reach their records. Baseball then received another black eye in the early 2000s when officials learned that home run champion Barry Bonds was connected with Victor Conte and his company, Balco, an organization that supplied numerous athletes with PEDs. Bonds battled the allegations, and testified to Congress that he never knowingly took any illegal steroids. Whether he knew it or not, he did take them and his record is tainted.
Since these revelations, baseball has enhanced its testing policies and increased the pressure on suspected cheaters.
Braun is the first former MVP to have been caught using a banned substance, but his case is only the beginning as MLB is carefully investigating Bosch’s books. Officials have told several media outlets that Braun’s name only appeared a few times in Bosch’s records, but New York Yankees slugger and future Hall of Fame Player Alex Rodriguez’s name is connected with Bosch through hundreds of pages of documents that involved banned substances.
It’s also refreshing to see that current MLB players are stepping up and criticizing Braun for cheating, which is a shift from the previous culture of tip-toeing around the issue.
Los Angeles Dodger Matt Kemp, who finished second to Braun in the 2011 MVP voting, told the Associated Press last week that Braun should be stripped of his award.
Seattle Mariners pitcher Joe Saunders told the AP that he felt the suspension should’ve been at least a year, and Kemp’s teammate Skip Schumaker told the Los Angeles Times that Braun should be banned for life, and that players should only get one strike.
It is nice to see that MLB is cleaning up its act, at least publicly, and is taking the steroid issue seriously. The fact that players are fed up with the cheating also goes to show that baseball is moving in the right direction.
Baseball was never a game that featured athletes who looked like bodybuilders such as the National Football League. The beauty of the game was that its stars looked like everyday people, and not superb athletes. Obviously former MLB players were world class, but the PED era has erased those memories. No one can forget the size of McGwire with his biceps bulging through his shirt in 1998 when he broke Roger Maris’ single-season home run mark, or that Bonds not only turned into a behemoth, but his head also grew two hat sizes from 1991 to 2004. Baseball and the fans should’ve known something was amiss, but no one at that time wanted to believe it or admit that cheating was occurring because watching long-time records fall was exciting. Baseball made a lot of money during those years because players were achieving levels that were never before imagined.
Thankfully, that is all changing.
Braun, who said last year that he never used a PED and that he was 100 percent innocent, has yet to make an apology for lying to the fans, but that’s OK, as baseball has made the right statement with his suspension. It’s up to him to gain the fans’ trust, and watching him go through that progression is worth more than any apology.
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Today’s editorial was written by Sports Editor Al Edwards on behalf of the Journal Tribune Editorial Board. Questions? Comments? Contact Managing Editor Kristen Schulze Muszynski by calling 282-1535, Ext. 322, or via email at kristenm@journaltribune.com.
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