Will Ryan Braun Really Ever Be Innocent To The Public?

Recently, it has been discovered that Ryan Braun, the Milwaukee Brewers left fielder, could have been using steroids. Braun would have been facing a 50 game suspension if found guilty. Luckily for Braun, there was an error in the procedure of collecting his urine sample; Braun was found “innocent” not based on his negative drug test but by the mistake of the administrator, named Dino Laurenzi Jr. who went to a Fedex that was closed. Laurenzi was said to have kept it in his refrigerator for over 40 hours and then shipped it to a testing laboratory. This leaves a sufficient amount of time for someone to have tainted with Braun’s urine sample. (Brewer's Braun still trying to establish innocence). This leaves a lot of questions for the public, the fans, and many baseball writers. Is it immoral to allow a player who has been accused of using steroids to play without a suspension if he was found innocent based on an inconclusive drug test? Will people really view Braun as innocent? Will the fans view Braun differently because he was found innocent based on a procedural error in testing his urine sample? Why will they view him differently after this ordeal? 

            Baseball writers have addressed many of these questions. Bob Nightengale, in his article, Brewer’s Braun still trying to establish innocence, reports that a baseball official Rob Manfred, is appalled by the ruling the arbitrator gives Braun. The catcher of the Brewers, Jonathon Lucroy, expressed his concern on the question of whether people will view Braun differently, "Even though Braunie cleared this up, this will be attached to him the rest of his life. He'll be painted with a broad brush that he's a cheater. And that's sad (Brewer's Braun still trying to establish innocence)." Jonathon Lucroy is correct in the fact that people will view Braun differently; the reasoning to people viewing Braun differently goes back to the morality of baseball. Americans views baseball as the all American sport, it is romanticized and mythologized, it is held to higher standards than many other sports, and because of this Americans believe that major league baseball players cannot participate in anything immoral. So what would be one of the reasons people question and hold hatred toward Ryan Braun?

            In The Cambridge Companion to Baseball, David and Daniel Luban, discuss the issues of cheating in baseball. One of the reasons they believe people would view players differently that have been accused of using steroids like Ryan Braun is that if some players use steroids it will put unfair pressure on players that do not use steroids. “The real trouble is that once some players start muscling up and recovering more quickly, it pressures other players to join the arms race (and legs race, and chest race). That’s where the genuine worry about cheating comes in: users gain an unfair advantage over nonusers, and no player should be under pressure to become a user” (Luban and Luban, 191-2). Could this be one of the reasons the public view Braun differently from now on?