Why I Despise Ryan Braun More Than I Despise Alex Rodriguez

As if any more data points were necessary, Alex Rodriguez demonstrated this week that he belongs to a growing club of people -- Lance Armstrong, Bill Clinton, Ryan Braun, Ted Bundy among others -- for whom lying is a strategy and for whom the truth is an option only when all others have been exhausted.

ARod released a written statement this week vaguely apologizing for "mistakes" without ever identifying his transgressions amid the hope that the baseball public would simply forget about it and let him play ball. This is a ploy clearly devised by new handlers who recognize that there is plenty of precedent for avoiding the issue until the public just gives up and talks about something else.

This strategy worked magnificently for Braun, but for reasons unavailable to ARod. Braun still has ability that endears him to the Milwaukee faithful. Although Braun is the same conniving scumbag that Rodriguez is, his entire lying scheme can be seen as one incident, so that even fans residing outside Wisconsin might be willing to give him a second chance. And Braun never committed the tripartite sins of a) not being Derek Jeter, b) signing an insanely lucrative contract or c) going to New York.

Rodriguez has to admire Braun from afar for ingeniously squirming out of responsibility for his package of bald-faced lying, phony self-righteousness, evasion of consequences -- he accepted a suspension during which he was injured anyway; his one and only punishment being the lost income during that period --  and reinstatement in the hometown fans' hearts. Braun and his PR team have to earn ARod's particular reverence for the manner in which they cynically portrayed his refusal to discuss his transgressions as an abject apology.

Sadly, as with much else in his life, Alex Rodriguez is way too tone deaf to pull off a Braun. For all his world class talent, his immense drive and hard work, his intelligence and his spectacular good looks, ARod is a supremely sad and pathetic creature worthy of our sympathy alongside our scorn. It is transparent from a great distance that he suffers from raging self-doubt and very possibly depression. He is extremely uncomfortable in his own snake skin and so wants to be liked without understanding that he first has to like himself.

And so Rodriguez's evasiveness will simply come off as evasiveness. Yankee fans will mock him. The team will beseech the god of loopholes for a way out of his contract. The media will rip what is left of him until they get tired of it, or until he gets hurt again. In the end, it won't matter anyway, because ARod will start to embarrass himself on the field. Don't be surprised if he retires in shame before his contract runs out (in three years.)

Ultimately, shame and accountability will be the reasons to detest Braun and not Rodriguez. ARod, unable to tune out other people's wrath, suffers in his shame and is held accountable for his misdeeds by everyone connected to the sport. Braun, pathologically, knows no shame and has manipulated his situation so that he will get away with it.

Translating Ryan Braun's News Conference

Admitted liar Ryan Braun made his first public appearance yesterday, serving himself up to reporters while collecting food for needy families in an attempt to whitewash his tattered image. In the wake of his inept non-apology following acceptance of a 65-game suspension for PED use that he had previously denied with self-righteous indignation, Braun's team of lawyers and PR people evidently have devised a new strategy: do nominally good acts and politely decline to discuss the matter in the hopes that reporters will give up asking about it and people will cease to care.

It's a master stroke, because more apologizing, even sincere apologies that acknowledge the breadth and depth of his duplicity and accept total responsibility for it, won't change anyone's mind. Brewer fans will forget Braun's sins as soon as he makes his first appearance in their team's uniform. Like fans everywhere, they care less about morality and ethics than they do about their own desires, and if a former MVP can help them win, that overrides all other considerations.

Don't make that face, Giants fans. You cheered Barry Bonds to the end. Quit chuckling, Florida State followers. You're more concerned that charges against Jameis Winston will affect the Seminoles' championship run than that an innocent young woman might have been raped.

Settle down Baltimorons. You worship Ray Lewis to this day, willfully ignorant that, at the very least, he got away with impeding a double-murder investigation, at worst, he was complicit in the stabbing deaths of two men, and most likely, something in between that warrants punishment and recrimination that he never endured.

For the majority of baseball fans who don't follow Milwaukee's team, the details of Braun's hypocrisy will evaporate to a hazy film and they will forgive him for cheating as they've done for many others. Of course, cheating is the least of Braun's sins.

The rest of us, those paying attention to the cover-up as well as the crime, are deaf to any apologies. Had he not been caught with unassailable proof against him, it is indisputable that Ryan Braun would still be cheating, issuing sanctimonious denials and exploiting his disproportionate power and wealth to crush anyone who might reveal his lies.

To what appears to be his credit, Braun stopped to face reporters at the food drive. "I'm happy to answer your questions," he said. He then spent 15 minutes evading their queries. As a public service, Braindrizzling offers this translated partial transcript of the news conference.

Reporter: Ryan, why did you lie about PEDs?
Braun: As you know, I've been through a lot and as I expressed in my statement...I got into a lot of details at that point and I'm not going to go into further details.
Translation: I'm happy to take your questions but I'm not going to answer them! C'mon, do I look like an idiot? No, in fact I look like a movie star and it doesn't hurt that I'm articulate too. So the good people of Wisconsin will see me politely facing my accusers and won't dwell on the actual verbal content. Yea, me!

Reporter: What do you have to say to the Little Leaguers who really have worshiped the ground you walked on?
Braun: I made a mistake, a huge mistake that's obviously been very difficult to deal with...we all deal with adversity, we all deal with challenges in life and you can take the opportunity to view them as an obstacle or an opportunity to grow from, to learn from and to help others to learn from and that's what I intend to do.
Translation: Little Fucking Leaguers? How about me? I have to endure questions like these from low-life reporters merely for being a scumbag. I'm the victim here! Look at the adversity I have to deal with. Woe is me!

Reporter: In your opinion was the bigger sin using the PEDs or lying about it after the fact?
Braun: As I stated, the goal for me is just being able to move forward. I'm not really going to get into too many specific about what happened except to say I'm extremely remorseful...
Translation: I'm happy to take your questions.

Reporter: Ryan, what was the injury that you referred to in your statement that you took the products for?
Braun: Again, I'm not going to get into specifics and continue to go backward. I'm moving forward...
Translation: My pants are on fire.

Reporter: Don't you think you owe everybody who wants to talk about the specifics and tell us exactly what happened?
Braun: I completely understand and respect where you guys are coming from and that part of your job is to ask those questions but I hope you guys can understand and respect the fact that in an effort to move forward I'm not going to continue to discuss this stuff.
Translation: See, if I keep saying that I won't continue to discuss this stuff people will forget that I never discussed it in the first place and that "this stuff" is cheating my way to an MVP and lying relentlessly for two years to your faces. Do I have the best PR team or what!

Reporter: Ryan, what about the 2011 MVP award? Does this revelation invalidate that award?
Braun: As I said, I'm just going to move forward. I think that's all I can do. I'm not going to go back and discuss things that happened in the past...
Translation: Possession is nine-tenths of the law, suckers! So the trophy is mine as long as I maintain an unbroken chain of custody. In conclusion, I'd like to offer my sincere apology and remorse and also my middle finger to the good people of Milwaukee and all of Major League Baseball and with the help of my vast wealth, my lawyers and my truth spinners, I hope I can outlast everyone's indignation, which I assume will continue unabated for many minutes to come.