Faces of Milwaukee: Ryan Braun

We recently said farewell to the subject of today's portrait, Ryan Braun, as he decided to retire from Major League Baseball after 14 years, all spent with the Milwaukee Brewers. He was a star prospect at the Grenada Hills High School in Los Angeles, breaking the school record for home runs as a Senior. He was rated the sixth-best shortstop prospect in the country at the time, and among the top 100 overall prospects, but chose to attend the University of Miami on an academic scholarship due to his excellent grades. At Miami, he was named "National Freshman of the Year". In his Junior year, he was named ACC Baseball Player of the Year, batting .396 with 18 home runs, but the Brewers drafted him fifth overall in the 2005 major league draft at third base, ending his college career.

Braun rose rapidly through the Brewers' minor league system, finally receiving his first major league action in the late May 2007 after they lost regular third baseman Corey Koskie to post-concussion syndrome for the year. After what some have called the one of the most dominant rookie seasons ever, including breaking the home run record for a Brewers rookie with 34, and leading the team in batting average and slogging, he was named NL Rookie of the Year. For the next several years, he would rack up awards including five all-star selections, five consecutive Silver Slugger Awards, NL MVP in 2011, and was a member of the 30-30 club and 40-30 club (30/40+ HR and 30 stolen bases).

His dominance would be interrupted by scandal in 2013. He was first involved in a complicated dispute involving a positive test for performance-enhancing drugs that was eventually overturned after Braun alleged that the man who had taken the sample held antisemitic beliefs or allegiance to a rival team and had improperly handled it. However, Braun would also later be linked to the company Biogenesis who was alleged to have distributed PEDs to a number of baseball players. He eventually admitted to using PEDs in 2013 and apologized to the man he had blamed for supposedly sabotaging his earlier test, and ultimately received a 65 game suspension. Although he failed to reach the same level of performance after his return to the game in 2014, he received another All-star selection in 2015 and reached the career milestones of 300 HR, 1,000 RBIs, and 1,000 runs as he continued to hit for power and average. In 2020, the Brewers declined to pick up his option making him a free agent for the first time in his career. With no interest from teams in 2021, he decided to retire on September 14th.

Braun was also one of the rare Jewish major league baseball players. His father was born in Israel and immigrated to the US at age seven, and although his mother was Catholic, he considered himself Jewish and has said he is proud to be a role model for young Jewish kids.