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Name: Jim MonaghanHeight: 5'8"Weight: 150
Prior to joining WDHA, Jim spent a number of years as part of the New York/New Jersey sports media corps covering the Mets, Yankees, Jets, Giants, Knicks, Nets, Devils and Rangers. Jim has over 25 years of experience coaching and playing baseball. He spent two years in baseball management with the Newark Bears. and coached the Don Bosco Prep freshman baseball team to back-to-back Bergen County championships for the only time in the school's history. He's also an instructor with Professional Baseball Instruction in Bergen County.
Here's exactly what we know about Ryan Braun and the positive test for performance enhancing drugs.
Someone is lying.
The easy suspect is of course, Ryan Braun. The 2007 National League Rookie of the Year and 2011 NL Most Valuable Player tested positive last October during the playoffs for elevated testosterone levels; as has been revealed, those levels were the highest ever recorded for a Major Leauge Baseball player since testing began nearly 10 years ago. Braun didn't dispute the positive test result, but insisted that he had not taken a known PED that would have resulted in the abnormal spike in his testosterone.
The other suspect is a guy by the name of Dino Laurenzi, Jr. who was the collector of Braun's specimen in October, and who for some reason opted to bring the sample to his home instead of straight to a FedEx location. During his press conference last week at the Brewers' spring training site, Braun said "There were a lot of things we learned about the collector, about the collection process, about the way the entire thing worked that made us very concerned and very suspicious about what actually happened." Those "things" they learned haven't been revealed.
As you might expect, reaction both in and out of baseball has been decidedly mixed. There are a number of current and former Major Leaguers who have serious questions about Braun's version of the truth. For their part, Major League Baseball is livid with the finding of an arbitrator last week who overturned Braun's 50-game suspension. It's lengthy, but I've linked a document detailing MLB's drug testing agreement with the MLB Players Association. The whole "chain of custody" you've been hearing about begins on page 37 of that document.
In his statement last week, Braun talked about a process that is "fatally flawed." Why Laurenzi waited 44 hours to get Braun's sample to FedEx is almost mind-boggling. Did he have an axe to grind with Braun? Who leaked Braun's positive test to ESPN last year in the first place? Does someone else have an issue with Braun? One thing I can tell you is that Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens have to be elated with what took place last week. And don't be surprised if Manny Ramirez, currently looking at his own 50-game suspension for a positive PED test should he make the Oakland A's roster out of spring training, doesn't look into hiring Ryan Braun's legal team.
And still, all we know is that someone is lying.
Major League Baseball's Joint Drug Prevention & Treatment Program