By Brittany Burke
It’s usually this time in the winter sports season that we start talking about trade deadlines. For teams and free agents it’s a stressful time and last ditch effort to acquire big name players and from the business side of things it’s just another day on the calendar to bring the sport hype.
Usually the trade deadline could be pretty exciting, but alas this year was kind of a dud in the way of the NHL.
A lot of the major trades talked about happened before the deadline, so by the actual deadline there was nothing to really get excited about.
In fact, I was so bored with the whole thing that I began reading about baseball, yes I thought it was so bad I broke away from hockey for baseball.
Mainly I read about the Mets and how like every other year, they’re looking to turn this season around. I read about Fred Wilpon’s finances and the rumors about David Wright’s “inevitable” trade, but somehow Ryan Braun came up in my Google search.
Ryan Braun, who was set free of any performance enhancing drug charges a short while ago, is still making news because he called out and accused the MLB of a preach of confidentiality and tampering with his two cups of urine evidence.
Reading the way in which the MLB handles the urine testing process was like something you’d see in a movie and was pretty entertaining I won’t lie.
According to what I read, Braun had to be watched when he gave up the sample, which was then split into two cups, in front of him. The cups of urine were also given a handler which would take the evidence to FedEx to be shipped out for testing in Canada.
I couldn’t believe the amount of detail that went into testing for PED’s, but it makes sense. The man’s urine came back with a 20-1 ratio of testosterone and tested positive for out outer-body substance, meaning his body did not produce that testosterone, which makes sense since the usual ratio of testosterone is 4-1.
It’s obvious that he was taking something and yet he gets off! Why? Because of a technicality. Braun was let off all because the handler took the urine sample home with him for 44 unaccounted hours because he didn’t want the samples to sit at a FedEx over the weekend.
I don’t believe athletes should be using PED’s, I think it makes a mockery out of sports and if you’re so self-conscious of your ability to play then maybe you shouldn’t be in the league.
Steroid use is talked about constantly so I didn’t really pay much attention to the Braun case, but thanks to the boring excuse for a trade deadline I was forced to. Since I took the time to read about it I can honestly say I don’t agree with the Braun decision.
He was let go because a man thought he was doing his job the best to his ability and now he’s accused the league which is continuing to let him play because of possible evidence tampering.
The MLB has come out and said that they stand firm that his sample wasn’t tampered with and they believe their process works, there’s no way it can’t, it’s that meticulous.
But let Braun deny the use of PED’s, it’ll prove interesting to see how he performs on the field this season, because all eyes are going to be on him.