On Tuesday, a man revealing himself to be the collector of Braun's test, Dino Laurenzi Jr., sent an email to ESPN The Magazine to state his innocence and "set the record straight."
"This situation has caused great emotional distress for me and my family. I have worked hard my entire life, have performed my job duties with integrity and professionalism, and have done so with respect to this matter and all other collections in which I have participated," Laurenzi said in the email to ESPN's Buster Olney.
The test was initiated on Oct. 1, after the Brewers home Divisional Playoff game against the Arizona Diamondbacks. Braun submitted his sample, along with a number of other players, to Laurenzi and the collector was then supposed to by protocol standards deliver the sample to a nerby Fed Ex location for immediate shipping.
Braun said on Friday that the samples, which are intended to be shipped to the testing facility as soon as possible, were not even shipped until nearly two days after the sample was taken. Also mentioning that there were at least five Fed Ex locations within five miles of the ballpark that were open until 9 p.m. that same night.
"I don't honestly know what happened to it in that 44-hour period," Braun said of his urine sample.
Laurenzi objected to the notion that he had done anything wrong in the situation, claiming that he followed the same protocols that have been made standard by baseball's front office since the start of performance-enhancing drug testing in 2005.
"In that circumstance, CDT has instructed collectors since I began in 2005 that they should safeguard the samples in their homes until FedEx is able to immediately ship the sample to the laboratory, rather than having the samples sit for one day or more at a local FedEx office.
"Given the lateness of the hour that I completed my collections, there was no FedEx office located within 50 miles of Miller Park that would ship packages that day or Sunday. Therefore, the earliest that the specimens could be shipped was Monday, October 3," Laurenzi said.
Laurenzi went on further to say that he remained in custody of the samples until properly shipping them on Monday, and that no one besides his wife was in the house when the samples were stored. Laurenzi said he has taken over 600 other samples for the MLB and that he went about this instance the same way he has the others.
"I sealed the bottles containing Mr. Braun's A and B samples with specially numbered, tamper-resistant seals, and Mr. Braun signed a form certifying, among other things, that the specimens were capped and sealed in his presence and that the specimen identification numbers on the top of the form matched those on the seals."
