The Brewer superstar is a legend, but has a complicated legacy
Ryan Braun was inducted into the Walk of Fame over the weekend, one of the highest honors the Milwaukee Brewers can bestow upon a former player. Braun is the 23rd member of the Walk of Fame, a group that includes not just Brewer legends but also those from the Milwaukee Braves (Eddie Mathews, Johnny Logan, Warren Spahn, etc.) and non-players (Bud Selig, Harry Dalton, Harvey Kuenn, Bob Uecker, and former Braves GM John Quinn). When you restrict the group to purely Brewers players, Braun joins Cecil Cooper, Prince Fielder, Rollie Fingers, Jim Gantner, Teddy Higuera, Geoff Jenkins, Paul Molitor, Don Money, Ben Sheets, Gorman Thomas, and Robin Yount. (And Henry Aaron, I guess, who did play two seasons at the end of his career with the Brewers but was obviously way better as a Milwaukee Brave.)
That Braun would be inducted into this group is a no-brainer. He is, without a doubt, no worse than the third-best player in franchise history and the best since Yount’s retirement in 1993. He signifies something to Brewer fans of a certain age, which Bill Schroeder and Brian Anderson were discussing during Sunday’s broadcast: he represents the light at the end of a long, dark tunnel, the turning of a page that moved the franchise out from the malaise of the 1990s and early 2000s to a period of rejuvenation in the late 2000s that has lasted to the present day.
I was born in the late 1980s. I’m too young to remember the 1992 Brewers, who went 92-70 and competed for the division until the final week of the season. I grew up rooting for guys like Fernando Viña and Geoff Jenkins and Bill Hall, and when postseason baseball came on, I turned my attention to other teams. I rooted hard for the 2004 Red Sox, for example, because they were an underdog then, Pedro Martínez was my favorite pitcher, and it was fun to root for someone good. When I was a senior in high school in 2005, the Brewers completed their first non-losing season in 13 years when they went 81-81. That same year they took Braun with the fifth overall pick in the draft.
Braun tore up the minor leagues—in his only full season in the minors in 2006 he hit .289/.357/.514 with 31 doubles, 22 homers, and 26 stolen bases in 118 games between High-A and Double-A as a 22-year-old. By the last week of May in 2007, he was hitting .342/.418/.701 at Triple-A Nashville, and the Brewers could no longer keep him in the minors. He debuted on May 25 in San Diego and hit a double and knocked in two runs. He hit his first career home run the next day. After going 4-for-5 on June 30, he was hitting .349 with a .643 slugging percentage. At the end of July, he was hitting .347 and slugging .657. It was something to see.
Braun won the Rookie of the Year award in 2007. It was a crazy-good offensive season: as a rookie with zero previous major-league games, he led the NL in slugging percentage. He hit .324/.370/.634 and hit 34 homers in just 113 games. Sure, his defense at third base was embarrassingly bad—he led the league in errors, despite not debuting until late May—but he was one of the league’s best hitters. I remember reflexively hating Troy Tulowitzki because people were saying he should win the award (and truthfully, yeah, he should have: Tulo might have been the league’s best defensive player, and he was above average offensively—he had 6.8 WAR!), but our guy prevailed.
I spent my summer in 2007 working at my hometown’s Pick N’ Save, where I’d worked during my last couple years of high school. I had a supervisor named Josh, who I liked. “This Braun kid is different,” he said. I’m not sure why I remember that so clearly, but I do.
The other thing about that magical 2007 season, though: the Brewers weren’t bad. Braun wasn’t the only young hitter to star for that team. Prince Fielder hit 50 home runs, a franchise record that hasn’t been matched. Rickie Weeks showed pop and promise and stole 25 bases in 27 tries. J.J. Hardy hit 26 homers. Corey Hart hit 24 and stole 23 bases. None was over 25 years old. Milwaukee went 83-79, their first winning record since 1992.
The 2008 season started with real buzz. The young Brewers, they said, were ready to make the playoffs, something the franchise hadn’t done since losing the 1982 World Series 26 long years prior. Early in the season, Braun added to the optimism by signing an eight-year deal, the largest in franchise history at the time. The Brewers played well, but there were bumps in the road: a late slump led to the firing of manager Ned Yost with two weeks left in the season, and if not for the superhuman heroics of trade-deadline rental CC Sabathia, they’d have been out of it completely.
But they weren’t. On the last day of the 2008 season, Milwaukee was tied with the Mets in the Wild Card standings, meaning that if they won, they’d guarantee themselves at least a one-game playoff. A win plus a Mets loss meant postseason baseball for the first time in a generation.
That game versus the rival Chicago Cubs at Miller Park on September 28, 2008, is a big moment in the history of the franchise. Sabathia turned in one more gem for the Brewers, going the distance and allowing only an unearned run on four hits, one walk, and seven strikeouts. But the Brewer bats were quiet. They trailed 1-0 entering the seventh, until a two-out bases-loaded walk by our friend Craig Counsell tied the game at 1-1. The Mets were also tied with the Marlins after seven, and things could have gone either way.
But in New York, the Marlins hit back-to-back homers in the top of the eighth (one by former Brewer Wes Helms) to give them a 4-2 lead, and in the bottom of the eighth in Milwaukee, Mike Cameron hit a one-out single and, two batters later, Braun hit what is probably the most famous home run in modern Brewers history, a two-run shot to left that made it 3-1. He raised his arm in triumph as he rounded first base. Sabathia finished the Cubs off, Florida held on, and Milwaukee was back in the postseason.
I was watching that game in a house on the Lawrence University campus. When Braun hit his home run, I got so excited that I kicked a fast-food cup off the coffee table in front of me, not realizing it was full. Oops.
When Milwaukee made the playoffs in 2008, they hadn’t been to the postseason in my entire life… and when I was born, it was already nearing six years. We’d just become used to the Brewers being bad. It was especially dark in the early 2000s, when the worst teams in franchise history took the field in a shiny new ballpark. The 2002 Brewers, at 56-106, are the worst team in Brewer history, worse even than the expansion Seattle Pilots in 1969. It was Braun who led the charge that changed things. This wasn’t Geoff Jenkins or Richie Sexson or Jeromy Burnitz—all good players, but not franchise changers. This was a guy who could really, truly make a difference. To a whole generation of fans that suffered through those days, especially those—like me—who were too young to remember the good old days, Braun symbolized a new era. He was the man who carried us into wonderful, unknown territory.
Three years later, the Brewers fielded their best team since 1982 and won the division. In April, Braun signed a massive contract extension. He edged the Dodgers’ Matt Kemp in a tight MVP race and became the first Brewer to win the award since Yount in 1989. Milwaukee won their first playoff series in 29 years. They couldn’t get by the Cardinals in the NLCS, but you couldn’t blame Braun, who in two postseason series went 17-for-42 (.405) with seven doubles, two homers, and 10 RBI.
Perhaps it was all too good to last. In December, news leaked that Braun had failed a drug test. During spring training of the 2012 season, news broke that Braun had indeed tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs, but his suspension had been overturned on appeal because of chain-of-custody questions regarding the urine sample. It was ugly. The urine sample guy was dragged through the mud, suddenly on the receiving end of the wrath of not only a wealthy and powerful athlete and his legal team but also legions of his fans. A year later, an MLB investigation into the Biogenesis clinic found a paper trail linking Braun to the drugs. He eventually apologized and served a suspension that covered the last 65 games of the 2013 season.
It wasn’t the same after that. Sure, Braun was still good, but the joy was gone, and he was in his 30s now and he never topped 4.3 WAR in a season again. He made just one more All-Star team after the suspension. And while an overwhelming majority of fans were still behind him, it just didn’t feel quite as good. In the eyes of many, he was tainted. I begrudge no one who found it difficult, or impossible, to root for him.
His career ended relatively quietly. He remained a solid hitter through the 2019 season but poor outfield defense and declining effectiveness—a natural aging arc—limited his impact. He served an important role as a veteran presence on the 2018 and 2019 Brewers, teams that made it back to the postseason. His huge contract reached its end, and he retired after the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.
Braun’s impact as a player is unquestioned. He’s third in most offensive categories in Brewers’ history behind Hall of Famers Yount and Molitor. His 352 career home runs are 101 more than anyone else in franchise history. His 134 career OPS+ is behind only Fielder and Christian Yelich among players with 1,500 plate appearances for the team.
The broadcast on Sunday spoke of the possibility of Braun’s number 8, which hasn’t been worn since his last game, getting retired. It is the biggest honor that the franchise could give him, and it’s really the biggest honor he could yet hope to receive. There’s a reason why Brian Anderson never spoke of Braun as a Hall of Fame candidate. In an alternate universe, sure: he finished with that 134 OPS+, over 350 homers, 400 doubles, 1,100 RBI, and 200 stolen bases, he would have had more than 2,000 hits if he hadn’t been suspended in 2013, he had nearly 50 WAR. He won an MVP, finished in the top three two other times, and won a Rookie of the Year and five Silver Sluggers. It’s not a slam-dunk case by any means, but to draw a comparison, that’s pretty comparable to another left fielder in the Hall of Fame who played for only one team and never won the World Series, Jim Rice.
But there will be no talk of Braun as a Hall of Fame candidate. He might get zero votes when he shows up on the ballot, and no one will really think twice about it. Braun has not directly addressed his drug suspension in his appearances on broadcasts the last couple of seasons, nor has anyone associated with the Brewers brought it up. (I don’t blame anyone: why kill the good vibes when the franchise legend shows up?) But Braun does seem contrite, in a way—though he doesn’t apologize for anything, he never passes up an opportunity to humbly thank the fans for their support over the years in a way that feels different from mere lip service.
Braun is and will always be a hero to many Brewers fans, but my own recollections surely reflect those of many others—incredible highs, sad and painful lows, sad and painful in a way that’s different from merely never winning a championship. I am grateful for the moments that Ryan Braun gave us as a Milwaukee Brewer, despite mixed overall feelings. To those reading this who are too young to remember his heyday, he was truly an incredible hitter. No player since Molitor and Yount has had a career in Milwaukee like his. He is now in the Walk of Fame and may be on his way to having his number retired. His legacy is complicated, but secure.
As we get wrapped up in the emergence of what will hopefully be another generational superstar in Milwaukee, it’s worth pausing and reflecting. Ryan Braun is, with all his triumphs and faults, forever.