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Apologies in advance for my refusal to let this thing go.

Braun's defense team states that they were able to demonstrate that a clean sample left at room temperature for 44 hours will show the results of the positive test for which he was busted. He seems like a standup guy, so let's take him at his word. Now, nobody had previously shown in a controlled environment that epitestosterone will degrade and testosterone either will not or will do so at a lesser rate, but the theoretical possibility of this in a contaminated sample is why urine samples are supposed to be stored at refrigerator temperatures. So I look forward to seeing the results of his little scientific experiment in a peer-reviewed medical journal in the near future. However, that's child's play in comparison to what else he accomplished. What about the definitive follow-up carbon isotope ratio test?

The conversion of Carbon-12 to Carbon-13 releases 26.72 megavolts of energy, or a little over 13% of the energy released by fission of uranium. This fusion process is the primary energy source of stars larger than our sun. In nature, this process takes temperatures of at least 15 million degrees Celsius.

Ryan Braun figured out how to do it at room temperature. That's called "cold fusion," people. No radioactive materials involved. Tupperware and a cool basement. The biggest hazard involved is the pee. So, uh, worldwide energy problems solved. When does the Nobel prize committee get together?

Apologies in advance for my refusal to let this thing go.

Braun's defense team states that they were able to demonstrate that a clean sample left at room temperature for 44 hours will show the results of the positive test for which he was busted. He seems like a standup guy, so let's take him at his word. Now, nobody had previously shown in a controlled environment that epitestosterone will degrade and testosterone either will not or will do so at a lesser rate, but the theoretical possibility of this in a contaminated sample is why urine samples are supposed to be stored at refrigerator temperatures. So I look forward to seeing the results of his little scientific experiment in a peer-reviewed medical journal in the near future. However, that's child's play in comparison to what else he accomplished. What about the definitive follow-up carbon isotope ratio test?

The conversion of Carbon-12 to Carbon-13 releases 26.72 megavolts of energy, or a little over 13% of the energy released by fission of uranium. This fusion process is the primary energy source of stars larger than our sun. In nature, this process takes temperatures of at least 15 million degrees Celsius.

Ryan Braun figured out how to do it at room temperature. That's called "cold fusion," people. No radioactive materials involved. Tupperware and a cool basement. The biggest hazard involved is the pee. So, uh, worldwide energy problems solved. When does the Nobel prize committee get together?

Apologies in advance for my refusal to let this thing go.

Braun's defense team states that they were able to demonstrate that a clean sample left at room temperature for 44 hours will show the results of the positive test for which he was busted. He seems like a standup guy, so let's take him at his word. Now, nobody had previously shown in a controlled environment that epitestosterone will degrade and testosterone either will not or will do so at a lesser rate, but the theoretical possibility of this in a contaminated sample is why urine samples are supposed to be stored at refrigerator temperatures. So I look forward to seeing the results of his little scientific experiment in a peer-reviewed medical journal in the near future. However, that's child's play in comparison to what else he accomplished. What about the definitive follow-up carbon isotope ratio test?

The conversion of Carbon-12 to Carbon-13 releases 26.72 megavolts of energy, or a little over 13% of the energy released by fission of uranium. This fusion process is the primary energy source of stars larger than our sun. In nature, this process takes temperatures of at least 15 million degrees Celsius.

Ryan Braun figured out how to do it at room temperature. That's called "cold fusion," people. No radioactive materials involved. Tupperware and a cool basement. The biggest hazard involved is the pee. So, uh, worldwide energy problems solved. When does the Nobel prize committee get together?

Yeah, cuz you and Jenny just didn't have it. Me and Jenny. We got it. I can unlock her defense with a well-timed through ball and a towering header.

Polly: Don't panic!
Basil Fawlty: [shouting] What else is there to do?

One day MLB will have a device like the ignition interlocks for DUI's. Before a player can hit the field, he needs to piss in a machine and if the piss passes, the door unlocks and he can go play...

doubles as a hand washing sink for Moises Alou

Polly: Don't panic!
Basil Fawlty: [shouting] What else is there to do?

I think it was Lupica who went off on Braun over that subtle little insinuation that the guy tampered with the samples. He didn't come out and say anything that would lead to a conviction for defamation, I'm sure, but it ratched up Braun's douchiness level a few notches for sure.

Polly: Don't panic!
Basil Fawlty: [shouting] What else is there to do?

But if Laurenzi is a suspect, why wasn’t he identified as such in Braun’s hearing? If anyone believed the sample was really tampered with, why wasn’t the FBI called in? Maybe what we need, when this is all over, is to throw back the curtain, have Braun’s brief in his appeal, and Major League Baseball’s brief, made public, so we can make up our own minds about the facts as they were presented to the arbitrator, Shyam Das, who eventually made the ruling that overturned Braun’s suspension.

Maybe the biggest question of all for Braun is this: When did what was a chain-of-custody defense in private become a tampering defense in public?

That’s where we are. Braun clearly wants to suggest — in a nuanced presentation largely prepared by his big-time media handlers — that his sample might somehow have been tampered with, and the only person who could have done that is Mr. Laurenzi.

What Braun doesn’t answer, maybe because he can’t, is why Laurenzi or anybody else wanted to tamper with that sample, why somebody was out to get Ryan Braun, one of the great young stars of baseball, the face and future of the Milwaukee Brewers franchise.

We are apparently supposed to believe that the man who collected Braun’s sample went home, and began the process of altering it in what would have had to be a rather brilliant scientific way. Added synthetic testosterone to both A and B samples, resealed the sample without the lab detecting that he’d done that, then fooled lab testing as sophisticated as there is in sports. WikiLeaks wasn’t nearly this brilliant.

We keep hearing these vague suggestions that he, Braun, might sue somebody. He ought to make sure he doesn’t get sued himself by Mr. Laurenzi, and have to face the discovery phase of a trial like that.

For now Braun wants to stand for all victims all the way back to Capt. Alfred Dreyfus. But you keep coming back to this: A victim of whom? Baseball? You think the commissioner wanted this? Bud Selig once owned the Brewers, he lives in Milwaukee, he loves the Brewers and the success they had last season as Braun was becoming the MVP of the National League, he loves his sport’s smallest market drawing like gangbusters, the way the Brewers did last year

Braun has a perfect right to clear his name and he’s got a lot of heavy hitters trying to help him do that, people who absolutely don’t care how many fingers have to be pointed to do that, we were all made pretty clear on that Friday. Though you wonder whose brilliant idea it was to make Laurenzi out to be some kind of criminal.

Braun has a perfect right to say that the test was wrong, even though he didn’t beat the rap saying the test was wrong, he beat the rap on the chain of custody issue. Braun, because of the laws of baseball, can now go play out his career and continue to earn more than $100 million and be the guy around whom the Brewers are built for a long time.

The people who say that the appeal system worked here have a right to say that. All those who don’t care whether athletes take performance-enhancing drugs have a right to cheer on Ryan Braun for beating the rap, and baseball’s system of justice on this.

Make up your mind about this, and whether you think Braun was the victim of a bad test, or some vast and bizarre left-field conspiracy. Make up your own mind, if you’re not a Brewers fan, how much you care.

Just don’t be shocked when reasonable people decide that Ryan Braun is full of something besides synthetic testosterone.

I agree with Ryan Braun.

Who wouldn't? When he held his victory press conference a few days ago, after winning his appeal of his 50-game drug suspension, Braun said, "This is my livelihood, this is my integrity, this is my character, this is everything I've worked for in my life being called into question. We need to make sure that we get it right."

He was eloquent, impassioned and absolutely correct. This is why I consider him innocent. In the eyes of the system, he was not guilty, even though the people who run the system are livid about it.

If we're talking about impugning a man's livelihood, his integrity, his character, we need something solid, right?

And this is why Braun needs to clarify his remarks now. He needs to explain what he meant when he took a shot at test-sample collector Dino Laurenzi Jr.'s livelihood, his integrity, his character -- and didn't provide a shred of evidence, except that Laurenzi took some extra time to send in Braun's sample.


Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/w ... z1noz1RRuY

Polly: Don't panic!
Basil Fawlty: [shouting] What else is there to do?