I suppose I am a little late weighing in on this matter, but I have to agree with the critics there is something fishy here. The real lesson is that baseball, in contrast to the Olympics, for example, is just not that serious about eliminating performance enhancing drugs.
The long and the short of it is this, gleaned from a variety of sources. Ryan Braun tested positive for substances that could not be naturally produced in his body. The test sample was delayed in transit and stored for 48 hours at the home of the tester where it was sealed and refrigerated. It was impossible for the sample to degrade under these or actually most any conditions. There was no break in the chain of custody, as had earlier been reported.
What Ryan Braun did was to get himself a good lawyer. The validity of the test was never questioned. He was able to convince a panel of arbitrators on a split decision that a technicality of a technicality voided the whole process.
Baseball certainly needs to clarify the rules for handling samples and indeed for taking them in the future. Fans can conclude two things from the entire affair. One is that if you are a big star nothing bad will happen to you, at least until your career is over. The other thing is that, if the results are correct, Ryan Braun must be incredibly stupid or arrogant to have been taking illegal substances during the season, which is the only time baseball runs random tests.
This policy, by the way, is another reason to conclude baseball is not serious about enforcing doping rules, since in all other sports it has been found that athletes are more likely to use banned substances in off-season training to bulk up or when injured to speed healing.
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