It's innocent until proven guilty in the USA, except perhaps in steroids cases in baseball.
Performance-enhancing drugs were apparently so rampant in the past decade that players' guilt by association has become standard. Some players never tested positive and never landed on the Mitchell Report, but they still carry the punishment in the court of public opinion. (Perhaps we'll see how far it's come when the Jeff Bagwell Hall of Fame vote comes in next month.)
And Ryan Braun is now banished to that terrible list, regardless of his appeal to Major League Baseball that his positive test for performance-enhancing drugs. Braun is perhaps the most surprising positive test ever, as he is well regarded, doesn't seem bulked up and has a sterling reputation.
I think everybody in baseball really wants to believe Braun, the reigning NL MVP. It also would be a real black mark on the league's testing regimen if there was an error or a land mine in the process that took out an innocent player.
Braun has hired a big-name attorney to fight the allegation. Said David Cornwell: "Any report that Ryan ingested a performance-enhancing drug is wrong."
Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel wrote that Cornwell and Braun "will argue that the prohibited substance he took was not a PED or steroid of any kind. MLB's position will be that a banned substance is a banned substance, whether technically a PED or not. And if you've taken a banned substance, even unknowingly, you are subject to suspension."
It will be a tough argument for Braun, as no player has ever had a positive test overturned in the brief history of drug-testing in Major League Baseball. The hearing will take place in January before a three-judge panel. If Braun violated the drug rules, he'll likely be suspended for 50 games and end up on the naughty list, irrevocably harming a sterling reputation to this point in his promising career.
If there's a plausible explanation why his testosterone level registered very high and it had nothing to do with performance-enhancing drugs, perhaps he'll get some sympathy in the public-relations war. He still might have to serve the 50-game suspension.
And that might be Braun's best-case scenario.
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A picture on the cover of the new book, Walloping Wally and early New York Baseball shows Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Walloping Wally Simpson. When you compare their size its hard to believe that Wally would not have taken steroids if they were available in 1923. His record showed he had the skill but he could have used an edge.
Braun’s attorney claims that Braun never “ingested”. Ingest is a very precise biological term meaning ” To take into the body by the mouth for digestion or absorption.” There are other ways of using steroids than oral. So, in legalese, perhaps what the attorney says of Braun is truthful.