Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Matt Kemp, who finished runner-up to Ryan Braun in voting for the 2011 National League Most Valuable Player award, thinks the suspended Milwaukee Brewers slugger should be stripped of the honor.
Braun finished with 388 points and 20 first-place votes, to 332 and 10 for Kemp. Major League Baseball attempted to suspend Braun following a positive test that October for elevated testosterone, but the penalty was overturned by an arbitrator who ruled Braun’s urine sample was handled improperly.
Braun agreed Monday to a 65-game suspension for unspecified violations of baseball’s drug rules and labor contract.
According to an AP report, asked Tuesday whether the award should be taken away from Braun, Kemp responded: “I mean, yeah, I do,” pausing and adding, “I feel like it should be, but that’s not for me to decide, you know?”
Kemp said people feel “betrayed” by Braun.
“I’m disappointed,” Kemp said. “I talked to Braun before any of this happened, we had conversations and I considered him a friend. I don’t think anybody likes to be lied to and I feel like a lot of people have felt betrayed. That’s not just me, that’s the whole Brewers organization, a lot of his teammates. I think a lot of people feel that way.”
Jack O’Connell, secretary-treasurer of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, said the award vote was final.
“The decision was already made. He won it,” O’Connell said in an email Monday.
Kemp got screwed over by Braun. The fact that Braun accepted that award “after” he manipulated his way out of a suspension on a technicality shows the contempt he had for the game he professes to love.
What Braun loves is money. Lots of money. He’s A-Rod in a Brewers uniform.
