Braun Delivers Another Crushing Blow to Baseball

We have a new culprit to add to the ranks of the steroid-guilty. Yeah, it's that guy that won the NL MVP this year.

Here we go again.

Baseball seriously just can't catch a break. I don't even blame the commissioner anymore - ample rules and testing are in place to make sure those who use get caught. Unfortunately, those who use, at least as far as we casual fans know, are always the iconic players, the superstars, the athletes who we're supposed to be looking up to. Of course, as time has told over the past several years, we're looking up at phonies. And now Brewer fans get to share in that misery.

It's a real shame that it had to be Braun. He was so good already. He didn't need the juice, just like A-Rod didn't. Just like McGwire and Sosa didn't. And yet, he used anyway, presumably driven by greed and a thirst for further prominence. Are those qualities to look up to?

The reality is, baseball doesn't have any model athletes anymore. Our favorite players are probably the ones who would be first to be implicated in steroid usage if further users were discovered. For Braun, it doesn't even matter that he's appealing. It doesn't even matter if he's guilty or innocent. He has been forever linked to steroids, and personally, I won't forgive him for it. A lot of baseball fans feel the same way. It's a deep-rooted betrayal that takes place when a professional athlete cheats, because now the fan has had the wool pulled over his eyes. He's followed the moves, sprung for the jerseys, and screamed the loudest for the fake, the fake that everyone wants to believe is real with all their baseball hearts, but that none can anymore. Baseball has been tainted an eerie black, courtesy of not only performance-enhancing drugs, but of hypocrisy, inner corruption, and poor judgment.

And so we bury Ryan Braun with the rest of the suspended, as all the while baseball's authenticity continues to take brutal body shots. The sport knows exactly what's hitting them - yet attempts to stop it are still in vain. Is there a knockout on the horizon? Time has told, and will tell again.