LIAR, LIAR, BASEBALL PANTS ON FIRE

Here’s the important thing we know for sure about the breaking news in Major League Baseball’s performance enhancing drug scandal: suspended star Ryan Braun is afraid of Anthony Bosch.  Put into a position where he would have to go mano a mano  with the man behind the closed South Florida Biogenesis “anti-aging” clinic, now alleged to have sold hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of PED’s to ballplayers, Braun folded his.

Alex Rodriguez, also prominently featured as about to be suspended in widespread leaks I decried in an earlier blog, http://davemarashsez.blogspot.com/2013/07/drug-punishments-impending.html, had his own leaks spread around which indicated that he was prepared to face down his latest accuser.  Someone close to A-Rod alleged to the NY Daily News that Bosch had begged to be bought off, before he agreed to take money and legal protections to testify for MLB.

My guess is, Rodriguez and his advisors are considering their options.  He had been saying he would be back on the field for the Yankees by August 22.  Now, he has halted his rehabilitation from surgery, because, he says, he has injured a quad muscle.

Helping A-Rod assess his situation, finding a least-damaging-to-all-concerned outcome, are among the smallest reasons why Braun and Major League Baseball need to put some facts on the table.  The inarticulate mumbling going on now actually hurts all concerned.

Here is what Braun has said so far about being banished for the rest of this season (66 games) and deprived of about $3 million in salary: “As I have acknowledged in the past, I am not perfect. I realize now that I have made some mistakes. I am willing to accept the consequences of those actions. This situation has taken a toll on me and my entire family, and it is has been a distraction to my teammates and the Brewers organization. I am very grateful for the support I have received from players, ownership and the fans in Milwaukee and around the country. Finally, I wish to apologize to anyone I may have disappointed – all of the baseball fans especially those in Milwaukee, the great Brewers organization, and my teammates. I am glad to have this matter behind me once and for all, and I cannot wait to get back to the game I love.”

For this, and all the quotes in this piece I am indebted to the blog of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s Thomas Haudricourt.

http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/sports/216496651.html

Braun has issued a printed statement.  He is as afraid to face the media as he is to face Anthony Bosch.  And with good reason: his record of lying about his case.

From the Haudricourt collection:

Immediately after arbitrator Shyam Das has cleared him, because the allegedly dirty samples had been mishandled, Braun said:  “I am very pleased and relieved by today’s decision. It is the first step in restoring my good name and reputation. We were able to get through this because I am innocent and the truth is on our side.”

The next day, at a local Milwaukee sandlot field: "If I had done this intentionally or unintentionally, I'd be the first one to step up and say, 'I did it. By no means am I perfect, but if I've ever made any mistakes in my life I've taken responsibility for my actions. I truly believe in my heart and I would bet my life that this substance never entered my body at any point.”

After it was revealed his name was on a Biogenesis list of those who owed Bosch a lot of money: “During the course of preparing for my successful appeal last year, my attorneys, who were previously familiar with Tony Bosch, used him as a consultant.  There was a dispute over compensation for Bosch’s work, which is why my lawyer and I are listed under ‘money’s owed’ and not on any other list. I have nothing to hide and have never had any other relationship with Bosch.”

That was enough to fool me: consistent, logical statements from a player who had heretofore had a good reputation, lacked any of the physical characteristics of a “juicer,” and had an established record of all-star quality play long before and the year after he allegedly “flunked” a drug test for the first time.

And now, like a lot of fans, I want to know everything.  And, for a variety of reasons, all parties should be hurrying to fully inform.

Why did Ryan Braun “confess?”  I have to put confess in quotes, because, “I have made some mistakes,” confesses to nothing. 

Ryan, did you dose yourself with testosterone before the National League Playoffs in 2011 just give yourself an edge?  Was it your first use?  Your only use?

Why do you fear Anthony Bosch?  Would it be just your word against his, that he sold you drugs, that he was more than “a consultant?”  Or would it be his word and documentation of your debt and what it was for?

Or was your choice to give up a remnant of an already lost season for the Brewers and a remnant for a huge salary, with a multiply-huger contract extension already signed, because your blank-paged plea saved you from much harsher penalties and an endless campaign against you by MLB, featuring accusations placed in every form of media from the leaders of the game, Bosch and the press room’s amen corner?

Ryan, until you spell it out, everyone will assume the worst, that you juiced and lied and lied and lied.  And no one will believe you have really taken ownership of your crimes until you enumerate them, and denounce them, specifically and in detail.  Anything less will be taken, rightly, as sniveling.

And MLB, if you hold to your present course of obfuscation, “We commend Ryan Braun for taking responsibility for his past actions,” said Rob Manfred, Executive Vice President, Economics & League Affairs for Major League Baseball, people will wonder what kind of a case against Braun you really had.

Manfred, a former Deputy NYC Mayor under Rudy Giuliani, is certainly offering no prosecutor's statement of facts to prove that the player’s deal was not just a calculation to call off a threatened war of unflattering leaks and pettifoggery forever.

Worse, Manfred is acting like we should believe this was no big deal, nothing to see, and that we should all move along.  “We all agree that it is in the best interests of the game to resolve this matter.”

Just buy your tickets for 2014, MLB is saying to Brewer fans, Braun has done nothing we’re not willing to forgive and forget. “When Ryan returns,” Manfred said, already looking forward, or is it, looking away from what's real, “we look forward to him making positive contributions to Major League Baseball, both on and off the field.”

Hate the player; love his home runs.

Somehow, I think most baseball fans, most disinterested observers, will want more than that.  Ryan Braun and Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig (not his surrogate) should tell the truth.

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

DRUG PUNISHMENTS "IMPENDING"

Remember how the Obama White House re-defined “imminent,” as in an imminent threat of terrorism, to “not necessarily anytime soon”?

 

Major League Baseball (MLB) seems to feel the same way about the word “impending,” as in impending punishments for players who broke the rules on Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) through association with the now-closed Biogenesis Clinic in South Florida, and so do the pet journalists who uncritically swallow and pass on these vague threats. 

Since the first Biogenesis document dump to the Miami New Times this winter, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig has been promising action, and on a weekly (daily during All Star Game Week) basis, sources “close to” MLB have been saying Judgment Day would be coming soon to a TV screen, website or newspaper near you. 

This week Selig mounted the soapbox at The David Letterman Show to reiterate that his “tough”, “thorough” investigation was nearing a climax, promising with classic Seligian anti-climax that judgments and punishments would occur “sometime in the future.”  Sort of like that “imminent” terrorist attack” that makes it legal for the US Government to kill or arrest you.

Since its contract with Major League Baseball guarantees the Players Union the right to challenge any charges, and the union will challenge each and every one of them, Union leader Michael Weiner added 3 words to baseball's re-definition of “impending”: “not this season.”

Weiner also estimated that the number of suspensions of his player-clients could number be “5 to 500”.  The 2 most frequently mentioned names are the widely-loathed Alex Rodriguez and the MLB-despised Ryan Braun.

A lot of people, reportedly including a lot of his past and present teammates, don’t like Rodriguez because, in addition to being an insufferably vain braggart, he is an admitted liar and PED-abuser, who, in fact, lied for years about past PED use.

MLB hates Ryan Braun because he “beat” them in a PED case brought against him because his lawyers were able to convince an impartial arbitrator that well-documented errors in the handling of his suspect specimen made it inadmissible as well as doubtful as evidence against him. 

MLB responded to the decision by swiftly and pointedly (and point-headedly) firing the arbitrator.  This was, of course, a message to all future arbitrators and drug testers that MLB would accept only the results it wants.  As if any court would accept “evidence” whose protocols had been so violated.  As if the record for errors in forensic and clinical labs weren’t perfectly clear: they all make errors.

Exactly how many and how frequently is hard to say, but the standard guesstimate is that clinical labs make errors in as few as 4 cases in 1000 or as many as 3 in every 100.  Other studies set the laboratory error rate much higher.  And don’t believe the bullshit that the athletic drug labs are any better.  WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency has fired deficient labs and reinstated falsely-accused athletes with some recent frequency. 

WADA long resisted admitting the possibility of error, even after 4 respected Norwegian scientists blasted them for the 2006 banning of race walker Erik Tysse.

Here’s what the 4 critics wrote:  “The primary data presented by WADA are of poor quality and have been treated and interpreted in a deviant and superficial manner.

“It is pretty clear that the evidence presented is far from proving any guilt.  

"The present case is an example of misuse of scientific methods.

“WADA’s behavior in this case jeopardizes their credibility.  They must adhere to good scientific practice, as this is crucial for their efforts to prevent the misuse of PEDs and for gaining the respect and trust of athletes and the general public.”

Of course, in the case of MLB’s vendetta against “5 to 500” players, “scientific practice” practice will not be involved.  There are no "pending" flunked drug tests on record against any of the dozen or more players whose names have been leaked to news media.  A few of the named have flunked and been punished for using PEDs in the past, but no new tests will be cited against them.

So, forget science, but what about “legal practice?” Will the players get a day in court or before any kind of panel of their “peers”, baseball peers or citizen peers?  Nope.  Commissioner Selig does fine, says Commissioner Selig, playing investigator, prosecutor, judge and jury.  But in the case of A-Rod, what might a court make of the fact that Anthony Bosch the disgraced former head of the Biogenesis Clinic reportedly (on A-Rod’s thinly supported say so, we must add in Bosch’s defense) went to Rodriguez asking for hush money, and being turned down, before selling his testimony to MLB. And like a jailhouse snitch, Bosch is getting not just money, but a Get Out of Civil Court Free card, from MLB.

Braun, of the mishandled specimen samples, says his contacts with Bosch were not about buying PEDs, but about Bosch's being a consultant in Braun's maddeningly successful case against “impending” MLB suspension.  While encouraging reporters to put Braun’s name near the top of the list of “suspects,” no sources at MLB have offered any refutation of this, other than to impute guilt from Braun’s refusal to cooperate with the “investigation.”  Darn that Fifth Amendment!

It is easy and correct to be against the use of PEDs, even though many of them do not so much enhance “artificially” higher performance levels by athletes, as they quicken recovery from injuries or wear and tear which may be inhibiting an athlete from reaching his or her “real” performance levels.

It is easy, and too often inccrect to spew and repeat undefined "charges, and just as several Constitutional principles protect people accused of crimes from wrongful prosecution or conviction, so too, athletic institutional discipline must follow rule of law, especially where wrongful charges can permanently damage careers, incomes, and personal reputations.

A new case to watch involves the recently-accused Jamaican track stars Asafa Powell and Sherone Simpson, both Olympic medalists with long, clean careers behind them.  They got a new trainer, and after their first races with him, tested “dirty.”  They say they suspect the trainer, Chris Xuereb, tried to put something over on them and WADA without their knowledge or participation. 

This is not the first time such a plea for exoneration has been made, and not always falsely.

Let’s hope imminence does not preclude justice in the Powell and Simpson cases, and that the proof for Bud Selig’s “impending” punishments will be scientific and irrefutable.

In the meanwhile, MLB’s sources and the media recipients of their leakage should just shut up.  

As should the incessant marketers of "imminent" terrorism.