Once again, Major League Baseball’s nose got bloodied last week in its continuing battle to rid itself of performance enhancing drugs. News leaked that a group of roughly 20 players, including Alex Rodriguez of the Yankees and Ryan Braun of the Milwaukee Brewers, were being cited for their alleged involvement with a Miami-based clinic that reportedly has been a source of PED’s. Rodriguez, who has admitted to taking steroids earlier in his career, and Braun, the 2007 National League Rookie of the Year and the 2011 league Most Valuable Player, have drawn the most attention since ESPN broke the story last week.
A team of reporters from ESPN’s excellent Outside the Lines series reported that baseball was gathering evidence to be used to suspend this group for their association with Biogenesis, an alleged pipeline for PED’s.
The clinic’s founder, Tony Bosch, is reportedly consulting with baseball officials in hopes to wriggle out of a lawsuit that the sport has filed against him, claiming tortious interference. Braun beat a 50-game suspension for an alleged violation two years ago, and just as he did then, he is proclaiming his innocence. He claims that the $20,000 to $30,000 that he paid Bosch was as a consultant for helping him beat the rap two years ago.
There’s another $1,500 out there that reportedly went to Bosch for PED’s, but, as we noted before, Braun says he didn’t do PED’s.
Frankly, I’m not all that concerned with Ryan Braun or his reputation. Actually, as soon as I heard Braun’s name, my thoughts turned to Dino Laurenzi, Jr. Laurenzi’s name won’t show up in any of these reports, since he’s not a baseball player. But he has surely been a victim of performance enhancing drugs in the game.
That’s because the way Ryan Braun eluded a 50-game suspension in 2011, the same year he won the MVP trophy, was by throwing Dino Laurenzi under the bus.
You see, Laurenzi was assigned to collect a urine sample from Braun and two other players at Miller Park on Saturday October 1 of that year. At the time, Laurenzi had been collecting for baseball for more than six years and had done so more than 600 times without complaint. Laurenzi said after he collected Braun’s urine, which was after 5 p.m., he could find no FedEx facility within 50 miles of the stadium that would ship the sample that evening or on Sunday. So, Laurenzi said, he followed protocol and stored the samples in his home, then shipped them out first thing Monday morning. After Braun tested positive, he alleged that Laurenzi mishandled his sample. And the star baseball player was able to beat the rap, by successfully arguing to an arbitrator that a man who had been doing his job correctly for six years suddenly failed.
So, if baseball succeeds this time in proving that Ryan Braun cheated the system, and hits him with a 100-game suspension, Dino Laurenzi will have every right to invoke the words of former Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan. When Donovan was exonerated of fraud charges 26 years ago, he famously asked “Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?” In Laurenzi’s case, he should march right to Ryan Braun’s locker.