The day started off great for Brewers fans today when the team hoisted and bolted into place its 2011 NL Central Division pennant (or banner if you want to call it that. Then the media world gave us a gift I would have to say gave everyone in Brewer Nation hope.
That hope came from the Dan Patrick Show on DirecTV and Fox Sports Radio. It's known Ryan Braun had his hearing last week in his appeal for his positive drug test and DP had a chat with someone "close to the situation"
As Tom Haudricourt says on his blog on JS Online, Patrick says "Ryan Braun may be exonerated here. he may be found innocent. And judging from all the information I was told, there's a good chance that he should be."
Now this isn't set in stone, but the minute any one of us as Brewers fans gets any idea or hope he is going to beat this thing after believing what Braun has said about the test as "BS" someone comes along and says no one has every beaten a positive test with an appeal. Well, I cannot remember a time when a player's positive test was leaked before the appeal was heard. So, my answer to that is how do we know? Truth is, we don't.
I'm going to go along with what Dan Patrick said and use him for a minute as a spring board to show some validity in what he said. A guy of his profile taking what he has heard and was told in a discussion has to show that the chances of Braun beating this rap are greater than we could have thought. It would be unprecedented.
I have not written on the matter in this space before, but I've gone back and forth on the idea that Braun could win a libel suit with ESPN. I have not wavered on the idea that this should not have leaked. Especially if he beats it. Had it not been leaked, we would have never found out about it in the first place and wouldn't think anything of him being in New York other than to accept the MVP award.
A simple Google search shows a lot has been written about this today and rightfully so. Patrick saying this and making his case on why he believes it to be true is a large step in what was believed to be an open-and-shut case that would have seen Braun out for the first 50 games. I was coming to grips with that idea and ready to see the team struggle offensively without him in the lineup. But this could give us all hope.
Isn't that all we wanted anyway? Isn't that what we were looking for? It's like Steve Urkel when Laura Winslow told him his chances were 1 in a million his response, "So you're saying there's a chance?!" Well, consider me Urkel and consider this my chance.
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