Dino Laurenzi

UPDATE, February 28, 2012: Here is a story on the statement from Dino Laurenzi.

He said the FedEx Clinic Pack that contained Braun's samples never left his custody and that he placed the pack in a Rubbermaid container in his office located in the basement of his Pleasant Prairie home.

"My basement office is sufficiently cool to store urine samples," he said. "No one other than my wife was in my home during the period in which the samples were stored."

He delivered the samples to a FedEx office on Oct. 4 for delivery to a Montreal laboratory on Tuesday and it was his understanding "that the samples were received at the laboratory with all tamper-resistant seals intact."

So Laurenzi didn't put the samples in a cooler.

They stayed in a Rubbermaid container in his office.

How cool does Laurenzi keep his basement office?

Weird.

Read the complete statement here.
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Just hours ago, Dino Laurenzi was a nobody.

Now, he's arguably the most famous "collector" in the country. And he has some explaining to do.

From WTMJ:

Newsradio 620 WTMJ's Trenni Kusnierek is reporting that Dino Laurenzi, an athletic trainer from Pleasant Prairie, is the individual who handled Ryan Braun's urine sample back on October 1, 2011, after Game 1 of NLDS.

Braun, who did not identify Laurenzi by name, said the collector left Miller Park at 5 p.m. that day, but did not deliver the sample to a FedEx location until 44 hours after the test was taken. Braun noted that the drug program requires that samples be taken to FedEx immediately, "absent unusual circumstances."

...She said that he has worked at St. Catherine's Hospital in their Physical Therapy department.

The Journal Sentinel reports that, according to his business card, Laurenzi is the director of rehabilitation services for United Hospital System. The back of the card includes this notation: "The Sports Medicine Department at United Hospital System is an official national rehabilitation network site for U.S. athletes and, therefore, bears the seal of the U.S. Olympic Committee."

From Yahoo! Sports:

The veteran collector of doping programs across sports who for two days held the sample of star outfielder Ryan Braun’s urine “acted in a professional and appropriate manner,” Major League Baseball executive vice president Rob Manfred said in a statement Friday night.

Dino Laurenzi, who four sources said was the collector, has collected specimens for MLB since 2005 as well as the NFL and NHL through his job with Comprehensive Drug Testing. Though he never mentioned Laurenzi’s name, Braun impugned him during a news conference Friday from the Milwaukee Brewers spring training facility during which he spoke for the first time since an arbitration panel overturned his positive test for synthetic testosterone.

“The extremely experienced collector in Mr. Braun’s case acted in a professional and appropriate manner,” Manfred said in the statement. “He handled Mr. Braun’s sample consistent with instructions issued by our jointly retained collection agency. The Arbitrator found that those instructions were not consistent with certain language in our program, even though the instructions were identical to those used by many other drug programs – including the other professional sports and the World Anti-Doping Agency.”

Laurenzi placed a box of specimens, including Braun’s, inside a cooler in his basement when the FedEx location he stopped at no longer was shipping packages after Game 1 of the National League Division Series, according to sources. The package sat in his basement between Saturday and Monday, before it was shipped to the laboratory in Montreal that runs tests for MLB.

So according to MLB, Laurenzi is an "extremely experienced collector."

Really?

Is it routine for Laurenzi to keep specimens in his basement cooler rather than taking them to FedEx as REQUIRED?

The "extremely experienced" Laurenzi should have been familiar with FedEx locations and their operations. A collector of his experience should have known that he had to leave the box with FedEx immediately, not take it home for two days.

He claims the box was in his basement cooler in Pleasant Prairie. That's his story. His word isn't good enough. Laurenzi's basement is not a secure location. It violates the protocol.

Major League Baseball is embarrassing itself by defending the mishandling of the sample.

I wonder how much Dino Laurenzi's basement cooler would go for on eBay.

It probably has some value to collectors.