“I truly believe in my heart and I would bet my life that this substance never entered my body at any point” (R.Braun)
Amidst the flurry of news, comments, analysis surfaced in the wake of the ignominious Ryan Braun’s suspension, I found this article by Jon Paul Morosi at foxsports.com to be the one that best describes the misery of the fraud perpetrated by Braun to the world of baseball.
Braun, writes Morosi, with his 65 games season-ending suspension “proved himself as one of the most cravenly selfish figures” in American professional sports. He betrayed the faith of his team, his teammates, his employer, the fans buying his shirts and the tickets to see him play. He accused of subterfuge, knowing to lie, the urine sample collector who had him busted a first time in an October 2011 drug test. He caused the firing of the arbitrator who ruled in his favor on a procedural technicality in February 2012.
As a final touch of “criminal mastermind”, he decided to take the suspension immediately, without a fight, for 2 reasons: a) he was presented with overwhelming evidence of his wrongdoing and understood there were no broken seals, this time; b) he used his calculator and figured out he could save 600k dollars taking the axe now.
Yes, because next year his salary will go from 8.5 million dollars to 10 million dollars: so, 65 games without pay in this season sums to 3,410,494 dollars, while next year, the total would be 4,012,346, or a 601,852 dollars more.
He will then proceed to take this forced vacation and come back to his millionaire life next april, the world a happy place to be.
When I had the chance, last march, I picked him with my first overall choice in 2 leagues: I could have gotten Miguel Cabrera with those
picks, but I trusted him and thought that, pound per pound, he could bring more value than Miggy. Turns out I was wrong, but he had such
a lousy season, with so many real and fabricated diseases, I won’t have many troubles finding a replacement for his bat. I just hope he will have troubles with his conscience, and I hope he’ll get the worst of times playing away from Miller park next year, not that the Brewers fans have any reason to cheer this clown at home.
“I have always taken tremendous pride in my image and my reputation in being a role model and handling myself the right way and doing things the right way” (R.Braun)
