If anything, there was MORE reliable information available by the collector keeping it at his home because he could describe the conditions in which he kept it, whereas a FedEx employee would not have been able to differentiate the Braun package from any of the other thousands of packages accepted for shipment.

http://theklowntimes.net/2012/02/25/brauns-ruling-leaves-more-questions/

That being said, prior posts point out that scientists have proven that leaving urine samples sit unrefrigerated for days on end can result in the creation of testosterone due to the bacterial breakdown in the urine.

Ryan Braun did not undermine the enitre testing system; the system ALMOST undermined Ryan Braun’s career.

Perhaps we should test MLB HQ for leaks regarding pee? Depends!

Heaven forbid any of the Braun bashers end up in jail for a crime they didn’t commit. But, you know, the evidence would point to them. Something tells me they’d be singing a different song.

Glass houses, children. Now grow the F up and start accepting some reality.

You wrote: “most professional athletes take some form of designer drugs.”
I say prove it. There is no way that you can possibly prove such a ridiculous claim.

You said: “The stupid ones get caught.” Seriously? I say: Only fools make unsubstantiated public statements.

You also wrote: “Ryan is playing the innocent card when it is clear, he still tested positive for banned substances.”

Excuse me Justice Brandeis, but there’s a legitimate alternative possibility that you should consider. Three other Brewer players were sampled along with Braun that afternoon. There are four possible places where the labels on the sample containers may have been switched:

1) When the samples were taken
2) At the sample collectors home
3) At FedEx
4) At the testing lab either before or after testing

If the labels were switched at any one of these places, then your claim that Ryan Braun tested positive for a banned substance is false.

Now, I’m not claiming that the labels were deliberately switched; I’m just claiming that there exists a legitimate that the labels might have been switched either before or after testing for some reason or reasons yet unknown.

Just getting in practice…

Here’s a guy who played alongside of Braun for what, 6 years, and he claims that he didn’t follow the case that closely. That just doesn’t sound right to me.

We have nothing to mirror him vs the rest of his career and say “his performance is clearly enhanced.” Its not like Roger Clemens where he’s in his late 30s and still pitching suspiciously out of this world. He’s not a home-run hitter with X number of seasons that were nuts. He hasn’t gotten huge overnight. There’s no major injuries he suddenly recovered from. His performance doesn’t look or scream “enhanced” like others in this situation have.

I see both sides of the argument but in general it just feels like we won’t ever get the whole truth and some of the judgments people are jumping to seem a bit presumptuous.

The whole “synthetic” thing may be just sloppy reporting. Tim Brown, over at Yahoo reports it as “trace amounts of synthetic”. Others don’t even mention it. The 30:1 ratio (the result of the first test, which is NOT for synthetic T) is where the “insane high” comes from. Shouldn’t be more than 4:1, T:eT.

As to the degradation aspect: the test for that is, I think, pH, which seems to me to be to some degree dependent on evaporation over time causing concentration plus whatever acid producing bacteria growing over time. If the pH isn’t low enough to call it degraded this doesn’t mean that the busy little bacteria haven’t been hard at work pumping up the T. Just means a lack of significant evaporation or a non-acid producing bacteria or a combination of both. Doesn’t rule out bacterial testosterone genesis at all.

We simply don’t have all the facts yet. Nothing is off the table at this point: not Braun’s guilt, or lack thereof. Not chain of custody problems, degraded urine, tampering, pixies or lack thereof.

What IS certain is that the people who HAVE heard all the facts, not rumor (which is what we’re all working with), came to the conclusion that Braun can’t be convicted with this evidence. The credibility of the “degraded urine” argument is still good until we know the actual facts of the matter.

You’re assuming that the report — from crusading reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and T.J. Quinn of ESPN, naturally — implies the latter and not the former. The wording of the report, however, is not definitive:

A subsequent, more comprehensive test revealed the testosterone was synthetic — not produced by Braun’s body.

Can’t rule out from that that it was just plain old testosterone with a high T/E ratio.