Braun Suspended for Balance of the 2013 Season

[the 'stache]

Originally Posted by stewbacca

Your defense for Braun really resembles Lance Armstrongs defense. Tired of fighting the rumors, blame and brand Floyd Landis as well as the others as liars and cheats themselves(so they should have no credibility). I would love for him to be clean both for himself and for me as a brewers fan and baseball fan, but the company you keep really tells the story. I appreciate that you are defending him, but if baseball really had nothing on him, do you really think they would suspend him? I think they have many more fact than you and I could imagine. Those were presented to him and his counsel and he got off with only a 65 game suspension. I think he is lucky and he knows it. What if MLB went public with everything they had on him? The lurid facts could ruin him and his career but they give him a way out. Armstrong had so many people fooled(not me), but the extent of his cheating blew my mind. And the drugs didn't make Armstrong bigger, it made him recover faster among other things.

If MLB had all of this damning evidence, why the need to give Anthony Bosch and his former employees complete immunity?

Another thing. Lance Armstrong never had a suspension publicly overturned. Braun did. Instead of accepting the results of binding arbitration, MLB threw a hissy fit with their statement they "vehemently disagreed" with the decision. Then they fired the guy that cleared him. Then they decided to go after him again.

Doesn't MLB appear at least slightly overzealous to you? Does it not bother you at all that they gave complete immunity to the guys that were supposedly supplying these Major Leaguers with the drugs?

Where was MLB's "we must clean up the game" outcry while mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were both smashing Roger Maris's single season home run record? MLB had just come off a strike, yet when these two blow up dolls started mashing homers at a rate previously unseen in the nearly 130 years of baseball history, they blindly turned an eye. "Chicks dig the long ball!". When Barry Bonds, a man that had never hit 50 home runs in a season, suddenly hits 73 at the age of 36, where was their righteous indignation then?

I don't think MLB has this damning evidence you are referring to. I think it's circumstantial. A couple pieces of paper with a bunch of names written in pencil, some dollar figures next to them, and a whole bunch of corroborating "sworn statements" by individuals that would make my skin crawl.

MLB made it clear that they were going to have their way, and would do whatever necessary to achieve their objective. Now, I'm all for cleaning up the sport, but the depths they've sunk to in order to realize their suspensions is very troubling to me. They talk about the "integrity of the game" out of one corner of their mouth, then give life to their draconian tactics out of the other.