Michael Hunt: Time for major league baseball to move on from Braun Case and play ball

MILWAUKEE ? Much has been done in the best interests of the game during Bud Selig?s long and successful tenure as commissioner of Major League Baseball.

Because from Kenesaw Mountain Landis to Selig, that has been the acid test for all the keepers of the game, hasn?t it?

The best interests of baseball.

Nothing else matters.

Commissioners come and go. Stars come and go. Scandals come and go. Records come and go.

Sometimes, the occasional asterisk is affixed.

But the game goes on ? always has, always will despite the infrequent tweak ? in largely its original form. That is the timeless beauty and wonder of the sport that our Bud has been privileged to shepherd to a next generation that also will be entrusted to act in the best interests of baseball, no matter what.

So it is with some coincidence that Milwaukee is ground zero for baseball?s latest crisis. It is here where Ryan Braun plays; it is here where Selig oversees the game from the top floor of the tallest building in town.

Braun has become the first MLB player to be exonerated after testing positive for a banned substance. Braun, the Brewers and their adherents are thrilled. Meanwhile, the keepers of the game are angry enough to maybe consider filing an appeal or, at the very least, remain locked in adversarial position with their National League MVP.

Selig?s decision on how to proceed after getting the high, hard one from an arbitration panel would be based on many factors, but in the end, only one matters.

The best interests of the game demand that baseball let the Braun affair go like the bat slipping through Josh Hamilton?s hands. The best interests of the game mandate baseball to move on and distance itself from fallout that is relatively certain to occur between Braun and anyone he believes may have contaminated his urine sample.

Appropriately, baseball defended its drug-testing system as vehemently as Braun did his innocence. It had, and may have, a lot to lose with a program that was batting 1.000 before Braun.

But for the first time, something went wrong. Most egregiously, confidentiality was breached. The sample was improperly handled, according to the panel.

In the end, though, the system worked as designed. Braun went through the appeal process and won. Whether he is as completely innocent as he claims, no one will ever know except the player himself.

Innocent people are convicted and the guilty skate all the time in the judicial system, the reason for the appeal process. But this is just a game, and the best interests of the game are telling its temporary keepers to pack up the bat bag and live to fight another day.

?2012 the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Visit the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel at www.jsonline.com Distributed by MCT Information Services

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