Morry Gash/Associated Press
Ryan Braun, who accepted a 65-game ban, admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs.
Ryan Braun is not especially important to the baseball world anymore, except to those people who work or root for the Milwaukee Brewers. As a national figure, Braun is all but ruined. Most people will place him off in a corner of their minds — in a jail cell with giant syringes for bars, let's say — with all the other drug cheats.
But for the Brewers and their fans, Braun is theirs to stay, signed with the team through 2020. He got a standing ovation at Miller Park in his first at-bat after agreeing to a $105 million contract extension in 2011. Later that season, he used performance-enhancing drugs, Braun admitted in a statement Thursday.
In an interview last month, a week or so after Braun accepted a 65-game suspension from Major League Baseball, the Brewers owner Mark Attanasio said he was deeply hurt by his star's betrayal. But he also said there seemed to be enough good in Braun that he was worth trying to redeem. Taking his punishment was better than continuing to lie.
"It's a step in the right direction," Attanasio said. "But it's one step. He's got a lot of steps he needs to take."
In that spirit, give Braun — or, at least, his handlers — credit for his 944-word apology on Thursday. It was a step. It was incomplete, to be sure, and it would have been more courageous to deliver the statement in person and take questions. But it was a step.
"I have no one to blame but myself," Braun's statement said. "I know that over the last year and a half I made some serious mistakes, both in the information I failed to share during my arbitration hearing and the comments I made to the press afterwards.
"I have disappointed the people closest to me — the ones who fought for me because they truly believed me all along. I kept the truth from everyone. For a long time, I was in denial and convinced myself that I had not done anything wrong."
Braun — who said he had been "self righteous" and filled with unjustified anger — went on to apologize to relatives, teammates, the Brewers organization, friends, agents and advisers. That covers just about everyone, but Braun cited four others by name: Commissioner Bud Selig and a top lieutenant, Rob Manfred; the union leader Michael Weiner; and Dino Laurenzi Jr., the urine-sample collector whose reputation Braun tried to smear after winning the appeal of his positive drug test on a technicality in 2012.
Braun said then that he would bet his life that no banned substance had ever entered his body. He strongly implied that his sample had been tampered with, and an ESPN report last weekend said he lobbied for support from other players by telling them Laurenzi was an anti-Semitic Cubs fan. (Braun is Jewish.)
On Thursday, Braun's statement blamed nobody else. "Here is what happened," it said. "During the latter part of the 2011 season, I was dealing with a nagging injury and I turned to products for a short period of time that I shouldn't have used. The products were a cream and a lozenge, which I was told could help expedite my rehabilitation. It was a huge mistake for which I am deeply ashamed, and I compounded the situation by not admitting my mistakes immediately."
Someday, Braun will be in the same setting as reporters, who will challenge him on his version of events. Did he know he was cheating? How could he have been so stupid, either to knowingly cheat or to fail to research the products he took? Just what were those products, anyway? On and on and on.
It would be helpful to hear Braun answer such questions. He did, after all, stage that infamous news conference when he won his appeal, so for the sake of symmetry, he ought to hold another. But he is under no obligation to do so, and he may choose to let the long statement speak for itself, rather than risk being caught in more lies.
However he handles the news media, Braun must appeal directly to fans. He began that process, in a way, with a separate statement in an e-mail to Brewers fans on Thursday. "I understand I have abused your trust," that statement said, adding that Braun faced a "lengthy process to prove myself to you again."
That process should include meeting with season-ticket holders when the suspension is over, to answer their questions directly. Braun should show up for community events, wherever and whenever the Brewers ask. He chose to commit his career to Milwaukee, and he should hear, firsthand, what the city has to tell him.
Braun has already met with his teammates, many of whom had believed him and, like Attanasio, felt betrayed. Returning to the field, facing opponents skeptical of his character and doubtful of his story, will be another challenge.
This Twitter message Thursday night from Brett Anderson, an Oakland Athletics pitcher, probably summed up a lot of players' feelings: "So Braun has spent the last month writing an apology statement novel..."
Anderson, like most in baseball, can afford to think that way, because Braun is tangential to his place in the game. What matters most now is Braun's relationship with the Brewers and their fans. His statement nudged him along, if only a bit, on a path he hopes will lead to acceptance.
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