Suspension Is Testing Friendship of Two Stars

Suspension Is Testing Friendship of Two Stars

MILWAUKEE — Sports brought Ryan Braun and Aaron Rodgers to Wisconsin, Braun as the slugging star of the Milwaukee Brewers, Rodgers as the Super Bowl-winning quarterback who made Green Bay Packers fans forget Brett Favre.

Mutual friends introduced them in 2009. It seemed natural: two high achievers from California, born 15 days apart, striking up a friendship half a continent from home. Both bright, driven and single, Braun and Rodgers hung out together, won most valuable player awards, and, last year, became partners in a suburban Milwaukee restaurant. Until this week they were the state’s premier buddy twosome, the cool guys every cheesehead aspired to be, or be around.

But with Braun suspended for the final 65 games of the season for violating Major League Baseball’s drug policy, Rodgers finds himself in an uncomfortable spot.

Rodgers defended Braun in December 2011, after ESPN revealed Braun’s positive test for an abnormally elevated testosterone level. He gloated on Twitter when Braun avoided a 50-game suspension on appeal. In a Twitter exchange, Rodgers bet a fan his 2012 salary — $8.5 million — that Braun never used performance-enhancing drugs.

Now, it looks as if Rodgers was hoodwinked as much as everyone else who believed Braun was clean. And that rankles Packers and Brewers fans alike.

“There’s a little bit of extra sauce on this because it involved the quarterback of the Packers and the most popular athlete in the state,” said Drew Olson, the host of a midday call-in show on WAUK-AM, Milwaukee’s ESPN affiliate. “Aaron went out on a limb for him, and he lied to everybody, even his closest friend.”

Neither Braun nor Rodgers, both 29, has spoken publicly since Major League Baseball announced the suspension on Monday. Braun, who owns a downtown Milwaukee condo as well as a home in Malibu, Calif., has not been seen in public since leaving Miller Park on Monday after meeting with his teammates.

Rodgers’s one million Twitter followers have not read anything fresh from him since last Friday. But the Packers hold their first training camp practice Friday, and Rodgers is scheduled to speak to the news media.

The questions are not likely to be comfortable for Rodgers, who has called Braun his closest friend among his fellow athletes. In a cover article last August for M Magazine, a Milwaukee lifestyles periodical, Rodgers playfully compared their friendship to that of the actors Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly in the 2008 slapstick comedy “Step Brothers.” He did not specify who was who.

The two began palling around three years ago. Braun was on hand at Lambeau Field on Dec. 5, 2010, when Rodgers threw for 298 yards and 3 touchdowns (two of more than 50 yards) in a 34-16 victory over San Francisco. A month later, shortly before Rodgers and

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