Zack Greinke finally expressed his feelings about Ryan Braun’s admission of guilt and suspension, and he said he is disappointed with his former Milwaukee Brewers teammate.
Greinke was teammates with Braun on the Brewers in 2011, the year Braun won MVP and tested positive for elevated levels of testosterone during the team’s playoff run. Greinke was also with the Brewers for the first half of last season when Braun denied doing anything wrong in his now infamous spring training speech. Greinke wanted a few days before sharing his feelings about Braun’s admission of guilt and season-long suspension, and he finally opened up on Friday.
“The main thing is, yeah, he lied to us,” Greinke said via the LA Times’ Dylan Hernandez. “He forced us to lie for him, threw people under the bus in order to help himself out and didn’t care, blamed others for his mistakes and it’s just a lot of things you don’t expect from people.”
Greinke saying Braun “blamed others for his mistakes” was a reference to the MVP suggesting the sample collector tampered with his sample to lead to the positive test. Greinke also said he believed Braun when the outfielder said he was clean.
“Oh, yeah, 100% believed him,” Greinke said. “Everything was so convincing. He had people to blame. He seemed like a really good guy. He was a good teammate at the time. You don’t know the guys that he was pinning it on. I’m not positive, but I think everyone 100% believed him at the time. Especially the next year, he looked just as good as the year before. His numbers his whole career, Hall of Fame numbers. How could you not believe him? He was so convincing.”
Greinke says he’s thought about it a lot and it’s “upsetting” that Braun still has not really apologized for using and lying about it. He explained in detail some of what made him so disappointed
“Just the fact that he was willing to use anyone that got in his path. The closer you were to him, the more he would use you. It’s just disappointing that a human being could be like that.”
Greinke clearly gave a lot of thought to the matter and is extremely disappointed with Braun. But he’s not alone. Both Aaron Rodgers and Matt Kemp shared similar feelings and said they didn’t like being lied to.
Braun may be able to rebuild his reputation over the rest of his career, but it seems like he has done some serious damage among his teammates and colleagues.
