Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Forward 50 2013

Ryan Braun

Since the days of Hank Greenberg, Jewish baseball stars have been a source of pride for American Jews. Milwaukee Brewers left fielder Ryan Braun, whose father is Jewish and who identifies as a Jew, was no exception. In 2011, when he was named Major League Baseball’s Most Valuable Player, Braun made the Forward 50.

Braun makes the list again this year, but this time, his Jewishness is a source of notoriety.

According to press reports, Braun, 29, suggested that anti-Semitism motivated the man who handled his drug test, Dino Laurenzi Jr., to produce a positive result that showed Braun had been using banned performance-enhancing drugs.

Braun made the charges, ESPN reported, in private telephone calls to some of Major League Baseball’s top players shortly before an MLB appeals board was expected to dismiss his appeal of an earlier decision harshly penalizing him for drug use. Braun, ESPN said, was trying to get some of his fellow stars to stick up for him. (Two of the players later denied the report.)

To everyone’s surprise, the appeals board found in Braun’s favor. So Braun was off the hook — until written evidence from a Florida lab showed that it had supplied him with PEDs. Braun then fessed up.

“I realize now that I have made some mistakes,” Braun said in July 22 statement. “I am willing to accept the consequences of those actions.”

So far, those consequences have included Braun’s suspension from the 65 games that remained in the season, with a resulting loss of $3.25 million in salary.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.