Kemp Back To Second Place In 2011 NL MVP Race

So Bud Selig, who was at the risk of having his tenure further besmirched by an ugly steroid suspension to an up-and-coming star, suddenly gets pardoned when Ryan Braun's 50-game suspension is mysteriously overturned. Hmmm:

So Ryan Braun is an innocent man. Or is he?

So the MVP's successful appeal proves he's clean. Or does it?

So a man who has always proclaimed that his positive test was "baloney" (or a word that means something similar to baloney) can now resume his fabulous career and reclaim his golden-boy image. Or can he?

It's amazing, isn't it, what we don't know, even in the wake of Thursday's stunning news that Braun's 50-game PED suspension had been overturned by baseball's long-time arbitrator, Shyam Das.

This is a verdict that seems to tell us, if you just read the headlines, that Braun is as innocent as he's always claimed. It's a verdict that appears to suggest that the circumstances surrounding his positive test last October were as odd as his side has long contended they were. It's a ruling that theoretically proclaims that this was not a man who cheated his way to a Most Valuable Player award, as his supporters desperately wanted to believe.

But is that a proper reading of this decision, or isn't it? The sad part of this news is this: We may never know.

We still don't know exactly what caused Braun's test results to produce such a vastly elevated testosterone level, and it isn't likely anyone will ever tell us.

We're still not totally sure what caused this arbitrator to overturn this suspension, and we may never know that, either.

We're trying our best to digest a report by ESPN's Mark Fainaru-Wada that Braun's appeal was based not on the results of the test itself, but on questions about whether it was proper for the test collector to take the sample home overnight and store it in a refrigerator. Hopefully, it wasn't then contaminated by ketchup or a loose pizza topping.

Again, if 2011 NL MVP runner-up Matt Kemp goes out and gets the 50-50 on which he's said he's got his sights, this all goes away. Maybe Selig can fix that outcome, too.