Good news that a guy gets away with cheating?
Is that we are in this country now?
When they started discussing the security aspects of this, and how it “sat around” before being handed to FEDEX....it brought back a Air Force episode from the mid-1980s.
We had a weather operations NCO on base who was identified for drug usage by the random tests. No one believed that she was a drug user, but the AF rule was....you get kicked out if identified by their test. She hires a lawyer and a private detective.
The private detective arrives at the base and makes his first stop at 7AM to the clinic on base....where Airman Snuffy was the only lab guy at 7AM on duty. The lab was the folks responsible for picking up the samples at the meeting point, and shipping them back to the Air Force drug testing lab.
It was a funny thing....the private detective noticed Airman Snuffy had red eyeballs and all the physical signs of smoking some weed. The private detective waited till the officer arrived....asked some questions, and then asked who could have handled the drug cups....and of course, Airman Snuffy was a person who would have the responsibility of putting these into the box to ship.
There was a short meeting then....where the NCO’s lawyer met with the Air Force Commander there, and identified the clinic airman and the circumstances identified. This would have turned into a three-ring circus because across the whole Air Force....they were all doing the same thing....so there was this agreement made up. The NCO accused in this case....had the charges dropped and all the fees incurred in the hiring of the private detective and lawyer....were paid by the Air Force. Weeks later, the clinic was relieved of all responsibility of handling the specimen cups. Everything had to be delivered by a team of at least two witnesses, to a overnight shipping point, and immediately released that day.
The blunt truth is that if allow the cups to sit around, there is always the potential for some idiot to add something to the cup or swap it with another cup. Course, I will say this....if Braun’s home-run pace drops by 50 percent this season....most everyone will say that he quit using something.
From the Milwuakee Journal Sentinel
Braun’s positive test reportedly included “insanely high levels” of testosterone, by far the most ever detected in a player. He requested an independent drug test a few weeks after testing positive, which was clean, but it was not authorized nor recognized as exculpatory by MLB.***snip***
A source familiar with MLB’s drug policy indicated there were only a few ways to overturn a positive test, such as proving a chain-of-custody issue, a flaw in the collection process or providing proof that the player’s team signed off on the substance. Otherwise, the “strict liability” aspect of the policy makes it extremely difficult to exonerate a player.
He’s maintained his innocence the whole time and he doesnt look like someone who has been juicing. So if he really didnt, then it is good news.
It’s baseball. They never wanted steroids to be against the rules in the first place.
Is that we are in this country now?
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No, we live in a country where a part-time sample collector can violate drug testing protocol and store urine in his unsecure, personal fridge.
It is alleged that the sample purported to be Braun's contained 3x the highest level of artifical testosterone ever recorded in the history of the MLB testing program. A second Braun urine test administered a week later under proper protocol was 100% clean.
Braun exhibited no other symptoms (physical or emotional) of an individual that had consumed enough artificial testosterone to kill small farm animals. Braun claims that he did not take the testosterone and offered to submit a DNA sample to prove that either the initial urine sample was not his or that his DNA sample - which should still have had some trace of the testosterone - was in fact clean. It should be noted that all 3 player urine samples the collector obtained that day and stored at his personal residence contained traces of the artifical testosterone.
Given this set of facts, it is just as likely that a part-time collector screwed up his attempt to tamper with Braun's sample and sell a leaked story of an MVP's failed drug test to the media.