On Feb. 23, 2012, “Brewers leftfielder and reigning National League MVP Ryan Braun won his appeal to overturn a 50-game suspension for a positive drug test, becoming the first major-leaguer to win an appeal of a positive test…
[A]t least part of Braun’s defense hinged on his sample having been collected on a Saturday afternoon — Oct. 1, after the Brewers beat the Diamondbacks in Game 1 of the NLDS — but not in time for the doping control officer to get it to FedEx that day. The sample was not delivered to FedEx for shipping to a World Anti-Doping Agency-accredited lab in Montreal until the following Monday afternoon… [A] source with knowledge of the sample said that the seals on the sample were unbroken when it arrived at the lab, and that standard lab tests on the sample showed that it had not degraded…A source familiar with the situation said… that his testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio was three times higher than any result in the history of baseball’s [drug testing] program…
‘We always felt he was innocent,’ Brewers general manager Doug Melvin said in a telephone interview, ‘and I have to believe him and I have to trust him.’
Major League Baseball, however, offered a strong dissent to the ruling in a statement from executive vice president Rob Manfred, saying that the league ‘vehemently disagrees with the decision rendered today by arbitrator Shyam Das [who was fired by MLB on May 14, 2013].'”