Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Matt Kemp Is Not Lobbying For The 2011 NL MVP Award

The media conflagration about this is really pissing me off. As of yesterday afternoon before the game, reports started swirling that Matt Kemp believes he should get the 2011 National League MVP award, which was given to cheater Ryan Braun 18 months ago:

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.

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."

Now if you watch the video embedded in the above link (go ahead, I'll wait right here), you can see that Kemp is reluctantly answering a question posed to him by a press corps desperate to stoke controversy. Kemp is nonchalant about the award itself. Sure, he'd love it. But he's not standing on a soapbox screaming for it, nor is he coming at Braun for anything more than the parade of hollow lies that came of Braun's mouth over the past year and a half.

Kemp isn't even remarking about Braun's PED usage. He's just saying he feels badly--which we all feel--about being deceived by Braun for so long.

That's it.

What I'd like to see happen is for Kemp to stop commenting on this altogether, as there's really no upside here.

Kemp needn't worry about 2011. He's going to have other MVP awards on his shelf in due time.

Let Braun keep his own 2011 asterisk (and $127M, I suppose).

2 comments:

Betsy said...

Finally someone else who saw what i did yesterday! Stop asking the stupid question and making such a big deal about it . 2011 is over and done with, Braun didn't get nearly enough punishment.Even his bug-eyed conscience won't be bothered by the lies he told.

Cliff Beefpile said...

They really are trying to paint Kemp as a whiner. ESPNLA really is the worst. When it's not the 8-hour Lakers circle jerk of Mason-Ireland-Marcellus-Wiley, they only mention the Dodgers in this context. It's really pissing me off.