Why Ryan Braun is on the Brewers' Mount Rushmore for the past 25 years

The Journal Sentinel picked its Mount Rushmore of Milwaukee Brewers players for the 25 years of the Miller Park/American Family Field era. Here is why Ryan Braun is on it.

Ryan Braun

At the tail end of the most anticipated group of homegrown prospects the Milwaukee Brewers have ever seen came Ryan Braun .

Drafted fifth overall in 2005, it didn’t take long for Braun to make an impact. He was named the National League’s rookie of the year in 2007 despite playing in only 113 games, slugging 34 home runs and batting .324. He led the league in hits the next year, was named the most valuable player in 2011 while tops in OPS at .994 (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage), then led the league in OPS again in 2012 (.987). Through his first six years, Braun hit 202 homers, stole 126 bases, batted .313 and was a five-time all-star.

No player in Brewers history has had a greater penchant for delivering in the clutch. Braun’s home run on the final day of the 2008 regular season sent the Brewers to the playoffs for the first time since 1982 – and came mere days after he hit a walk-off grand slam. His late homer clinched a division title, the first in 29 years, in 2011. Even late in his career, Braun delivered some of the most memorable swings in recent years, including an eighth-inning go-ahead homer against Detroit on the final weekend of the 2018 regular season as Milwaukee made a furious run to claim the division again, and a go-ahead grand slam in the ninth inning at St. Louis in September 2019 with the Brewers surging for a playoff spot.

Braun is the all-time franchise leader in home runs. He’s third in WAR (win above replacement), hits, runs scored, stolen bases and OPS. In 2024 Braun was inducted into the Brewers walk of fame. Naturally, that should make him a shoo-in for this list.

More: Who belongs on the Brewers Mount Rushmore for the past 25 years? Give us your picks

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Ben Sheets of the Milwaukee Brewers watches during batting practice for the 2008 MLB All-Star game July 14, 2008, at Yankee Stadium.

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But, ah yes, the performance-enhancing drug scandal that hovers over his career like a March cloud in Milwaukee.

Not only did a positive test for incredibly high levels of synthetic testosterone during the 2011 playoffs add some messiness to Braun’s career, but the overall ugly fallout exacerbated matters.

In February 2012, a day after an arbitration panel overturned Braun’s 50-game suspension for a failed drug test, he held a press conference at the Brewers’ complex in Phoenix and brashly exonerated himself. He levied criticism on the sample collector and said, “I would bet my life that this substance never entered my body at any point.”

Of course, this all backfired on Braun when he was slammed with a 65-game suspension in 2013 for his involvement with the Biogenesis clinic in Miami . His reputation in and around the game  was effectively tarnished.

Yet in Milwaukee, Braun remained a fan favorite through the end of his career, all of which was spent with the Brewers. When he returned to officially announce his retirement in 2021, then again to enter the walk of fame three years later, he was met with booming ovations.

So, yes, you can’t get around the PED saga when discussing Braun’s career, but how can you get around the countless big hits and 14 years' worth of memories?

If we get back to the ultimate question for this exercise – you cannot tell the story of the Brewers in the Miller Park/American Family Field era without which four players? – there is simply no way to tell that tale without No. 8.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Ryan Braun is on the Brewers' Mount Rushmore for the past 25 years