It's a Technicality, but That's Ok

I remember once when I was a little kid, my mother got a speeding ticket and she ended up going to court to fight it.  The reason she went was because the fine was going to be hefty, and she noticed that the cop had written the wrong date on the ticket. A few other people had noticed that, too.  The judge voided all of that cop's tickets for that day because he wrote the wrong date on every single one of them.

But I was in the car.  My mom was speeding. The wrong date on the ticket  doesn't change that.  It's just a technicality.

I don't think there is anything wrong with appealing a drug suspension and to look for ways to beat it.  There was human error in the handling of Ryan Braun's sample. I don't know how keeping the samples for extra days (especially when they are supposedly refrigerated) effects the levels of synthetic testosterone in pee. But they have a set procedure for a reason.

What I do know for sure is that Braun tested positive for high testosterone.  I also know that the sample was improperly handled and shouldn't have been used. Braun's lawyer argued that and won. On a technicality.

There is an implication that the sample was tampered with somehow, which is more concerning to me than Braun getting his sentence overturned. That needs to be investigated.

Moving forward, the best baseball as a community can hope for is that all of Braun's future tests come back negative, which will indicate that he was always clean or has decided to get clean.  Isn't that the point of the drug testing? The ultimate point of the suspensions shouldn't be the shame of individual players but to encourage the sport to clean up.  The people foaming at the mouth to punish Braun need to seek help.

This should also serve as a wake up call to the drug testers, to be more vigilant in their procedure and if there are any chemists tampering with samples, to root them out.

Because if there is no integrity in the test, what is the point?