Opinion | Ryan Braun's betrayal busts Milwaukee Brewers' baseball buzz
The faith of the good folks of Milwaukee will be tested after they were duped by a handsome, charming but lying cheat
America's dairyland - it says it right on the state licence plate. Folks in Wisconsin are downright proud of their farming ancestry and while they tend to be predictably conservative on some issues, they are somewhat more enlightened and accepting on others. "People in Wisconsin will give you the benefit of the doubt because they trust and believe in people's good intentions," says my friend Nate, a native of Wisconsin working in Hong Kong's frantic finance sector. Part of his gig is staying tight with the doormen at the hottest clubs. He can get you access; it's his thing.
But when you try to engage him about the local glitterati he routinely shows you a video clip on his phone of him riding the family's antiquated John Deere tractor back on the farm. And this is one of the more worldly residents of the state. It's easy to see how the good folks of Milwaukee and Wisconsin could have been duped. Of the 30 teams in Major League Baseball, the Milwaukee Brewers play in the smallest market and although Miller Park seats 42,000, it seems like family and friends occupy every seat.
The face of the franchise for those folks has been a handsome and charming young man from southern California. Ryan Braun is a five-tool player, he can do it all on the baseball field. He is also a marketing dream who said and did all the right things and seems to have embraced playing in the heartlands at a time when most stars in US sports yearn for a big-market home.
Braun is also full of the vilest excrement known to man. He is a pathological liar and cheater and in a game that has known its share of dubious characters, he now sits at the very top. After leading the Brewers to the play-offs in 2011 and winning the National League's Most Valuable Player award, Braun shockingly tested positive for elevated levels of testosterone and was suspended for 50 games.
However, he became the first player in baseball to successfully win an appeal when it was shown there were errors in collecting his urine sample. And then he went on a pious crusade that would make Lance Armstrong envious. He screamed his innocence from the mountaintop while legions of Brewers fans, despite evidence to the contrary, scoured chat rooms and talk shows in support of their hero. "The truth shall set me free," said Braun, and last week it did when he admitted his guilt and was suspended for the remaining 65 games of the season for his involvement in another drug scandal.
He's now free to spend his summer any way he wants, outside of playing baseball that is, and the scorn he has engendered from both fans and players is unprecedented. Sadly for the small-market Brewers, Braun will be hogging most of their payroll for a long, long time. His contract runs to 2021 and he is guaranteed close to US$130 million. That's guaranteed.