As unlikely as it seems, the Super Bowl comes to Indianapolis next Sunday. As unlikely, too, as it may seem, there is a baseball connection to that development.

Twenty years ago, Jeff Smulyan was the principal owner of the Seattle Mariners. One of his major partners was Michael Browning. Smulyan and Browning were Indianapolis residents and businessmen then and still are now.

By now, their baseball endeavor is ancient history, maybe best left there. But Smulyan and Browning are enjoying the fruits of their Super Bowl efforts this week, Browning as chairman of the game’s host committee, Smulyan as one of the committee’s co-chairmen.

Besides their coup in getting the game for their city, the two men have a big advantage over most of the fans who will attend the game between the New York Giants and New England Patriots. They can sleep in their own beds this week, and they have tickets for the game at no cost to them.

Tickets were available on Internet sites at the start of the week for $15,000, maybe more. That should be enough to include housing, but fans can’t sleep in their Lucas Oil Stadium seats so a few of them might want to consider the house that, according to an advertisement in the Sunday New York Times, was available for $2,250 a night, minimum five nights.

The house, the ad says, is half a block from the stadium and has three bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room and a dining room. It doesn’t say anything about a kitchen so the renter may have to bring in.

Just the fact that Browning, Smulyan and their associates could convince National Football League owners to stage the game at a cold-weather site was remarkable enough. Of the first 45 Super Bowls – or should that be XLV Super Bowls? – only 3 were played in cold-weather sites, 2 in Michigan, 1 in Minnesota.

“The first time we bid Dallas was our main challenger,” Smulyan related. “We lost by one or two votes. They have 30,000 more seats and 120 more suites. We were encouraged to bid again, and we won pretty handily. The league has changed its thinking about warm-weather cities. The idea is to recognize it is a cold-weather venue. They want to make it like a Winter Olympics.”

While this week’s “NFL Experience” will include outdoor events, the game will be strictly an indoor affair. “We have a retractable roof, but it will be closed Feb 5,” Smulyan said.

During his 2 ½-year ownership of the Mariners (1990-91 seasons and half of ’92), the team played in a domed stadium known as the Kingdome and set attendance records in both full seasons, reaching 2.14 million in 1991, the same year the franchise achieved its first winning record in its 15-year existence.

The Mariners, however, were financially unstable. “We couldn’t sustain our losses; we just couldn’t sustain the losses we suffered there,” Smulyan said by telephone from his Emmis Broadcasting office last week.

Stuck in an undesirable situation, Smulyan followed the example of an owner who had become his role model, Jerry Reinsdorf of the Chicago White Sox. He tried to move the Mariners to St. Petersburg, Fla., the desired destination of every team that wanted to change locations.

Reinsdorf had used St. Petersburg as a wedge to get a new park in Chicago, and when it worked for him, Smulyan figured he would try using St. Petersburg not to get a new park but a new city.

Smulyan, however, had neither Reinsdorf’s political experience nor his clout. Without having permission from Commissioner Fay Vincent to proceed as he did, Smulyan met secretly with a Florida group that wanted to put a team in the empty domed stadium in St. Petersburg.

However, someone in Florida alerted Vincent’s office to the meeting, and Vincent called Smulyan and told him, in effect, that unless he was there to lie in the sun on the beach he better get his rear end out of there. Vincent also fined him $250,000, a former baseball official recalled.

Vincent and owners didn’t want to approve a team’s relocation to St. Petersburg because they had been discussing the possibility of expansion and were saving the city as a possible expansion site. The San Francisco Giants were blocked earlier from moving to Tampa for the same reason.

Smulyan was left with no recourse but to sell the team. Even that effort became a difficult process. No Seattle buyer came forward. A Portland, Ore., lawyer proposed that the Mariners become a northwest region team, say, the Cascadia Mariners, playing 51 home games in Seattle and 15 each in Portland and Vancouver

Finally, a United States Senator, Slade Gorton of Washington, recruited the owners of Nintendo, the video game manufacturer, which had 1,400 employees in the Seattle area. They were prepared to buy the team, but other owners weren’t thrilled with the idea of having a foreign owner.

Eventually, a compromise was worked out by which American interests would own the majority, though Nintendo was the single biggest owner. The deal was completed July 1, 1992, and nearly 20 years later Nintendo has been an exemplary owner and Smulyan and Browning, a real estate developer, are going to the Super Bowl.

“I have always loved the game; I always will,” Smulyan said. “I learned a lot there.” He added, “I got in trouble saying we could solve this problem in three days in Indianapolis.”

Since selling the Mariners, Smulyan has attempted one foray back into baseball, joining a group that tried unsuccessfully to buy the Washington Nationals.

If he did nothing else in his baseball career, by buying the Mariners, Smulyan rid baseball of one of its most inept owners, George Argyros.

Smulyan’s hometown of Indianapolis has had minor league teams for years and years but never a major league team.

“It’s probably too small,” he said. “We’re not a large tv market. We’ve been fortunate to have the Pacers and the Colts. People have talked about getting a baseball team. Nothing would make me happier than having a baseball team.” He paused for a second, then added, “Nothing would make me happier than having a baseball team and me not being the owner.”

GREAT GUY GETS GREAT HONOR

For a guy who batted .181 (in 49 games), Tom Kelly had a pretty good major league career. He won two World Series. One of the best people I have covered, Kelly will have his uniform number 10 retired by the Minnesota Twins late in the coming season.

The Twins made the announcement at their awards dinner last week after Kelly had given out the last – he thought – award.

“I got ambushed,” Kelly said on the phone. He explained that he gave John Gordon, who is retiring, an award for his 25 years as a Minnesota Twins radio announcer and was preparing to leave the stage when someone said, “You gotta stay here.”

Kelly said he looked to see what was happening and saw Jim Pohlad, the Twins’ chief executive officer, approaching.

“I saw that he had something in his hand,” Kelly related, “and I said ‘oh oh.’ They got me.” It was now Kelly’s turn to speak and he said, “I didn’t make it through.”

Kelly managed the Twins for 15 seasons plus part of a 16th season, beginning at age 36 in 1986, and led them to World Series triumphs in 1987 and ’91. He last managed in 2001. Does he regret retiring so young?

“You miss the camaraderie and the competition,” he said. “But I don’t miss the travel and the trainers and the doctors.”

He referred to his treatments for his bad knee, not the people.

“I see the games,” he said. “I sit on the edge of the seat, the mind starts going.”

Kelly continues to work for the Twins, helping his successor, Ron Gardenhire, where he can.

“We’ll have 65 people in spring training, 39 pitchers,” he said. “That’s a lot for us. I’ve been getting my body in shape. I’ve gone to physical therapy for me knee. They glued me back together. I hit 73 fungo swings today.

I hit fungoes into a net. They have me stepping a little different with my foot. It helps my knee.”

Kelly will be the sixth member of the Twins to have his number retired but the first manager. The others: Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew, Tony Oliva, Kent Hrbek, Kirby Puckett and Bert Blyleven.

RED SOX STILL SUFFER; NOW IT’S PTSD

If Kevin Youkilis is typical, the Boston Red Sox may be suffering post-traumatic stress disorder.

Speaking to reporters at his annual charity event last week, the infielder said he had talked with the team’s new manager, Bobby Valentine, during the off-season, and this is what Youkilis came away thinking:

“I think he’s going to bring a winning attitude and he’ll get this team going from day one. The thing I got from Bobby now is you play the game hard, you play the game right and if you do the little things right, he’s going to love you.”

Am I missing something? Or is Youkilis missing something?

Valentine is replacing Terry Francona, who was the major league manager of the decade for the first decade of this century.  Admittedly, my memory isn’t what it used to be, but I checked the records and confirmed that the Red Sox won two World Series in a four-year span with Francona as their manager. The last time a Red Sox manager did that was in the second decade of the last century.

A winning attitude? I suspect Francona brought a winning attitude to the Red Sox. Did Francona love his players when they played the game right and did the little things right? I would bet that even Youkilis, when he is thinking clearly, would acknowledge that he did.

Youkilis also said of Valentine, “I think he’s going to be great.”

Francona has already been great. Let Valentine match or exceed Francona’s achievement, and then talk about him being great.

If in his comments, Youkilis was thinking about the Red Sox great September collapse, he might have first considered what he did at the plate in September (.167 batting, .222 slugging) and what he did in the clubhouse to police the in-game consumption of fried chicken and beer, especially the last three weeks of the month when he played only three games.

A believer in giving credit where and when credit is due, I have to defend an agent I’ve never been particularly fond of. And, to be candid, Scott Boras has never been fond of me.

When word emerged Tuesday that a Boras client, Prince Fielder, had agreed to a 9-year, $214 million contract with the Detroit Tigers, the development came as a surprise because the Tigers had not previously been mentioned as one of the teams interested in Fielder.

Reports of the signing immediately branded the Tigers a mystery team, as in this CBSSports.com report:

“Chalk up one more for the so-called mystery team. First it was Cliff Lee going to the Phillies, then Albert Pujols heading to the Angels. Now Prince Fielder has shocked the baseball world by signing with the Detroit Tigers, a team that hadn’t even been remotely connected to him in rumors the entire offseason.”

That report accurately portrays the absence of reporting on the Tigers and Fielder, but it takes liberty with the use of “mystery team,” a term that Boras created and copyrighted, if not legally, by his use of it.

In the case of the CBSSports.com usage of the term, the Phillies and the Angels is incorrect. Lee and Pujols might have signed unexpectedly with their teams, but during their free agency, their agents did not say there was a mystery team in pursuit of their clients.

In Boras’ frequent usage of the term, he advertises the existence of a mystery team for strategic purposes. Who knows if it is or isn’t so? He invokes the existence of a mystery team to make interested teams uneasy enough to increase their offers. If enough newspaper or Internet reports mention a mystery team, his clients’ pursuers might become uneasy enough to raise their offers.

Boras also uses the alleged existence of a mystery team to quiet questioning by reporters about interest in a client.

The irony in the case of Fielder is that Boras, as far as I know, never invoked his favorite phrase. Even though his quest for an acceptable deal extended to the last week of January, raising speculation that he was encountering some difficulty, Boras did not tell skeptical reporters that there was a mystery team lurking in the weeds.

Yet, as it turned out, the Tigers fit the definition of a mystery team. Other teams had been mentioned frequently – Nationals, Rangers, Cubs, Mariners, Orioles – but never the Tigers.

On the other hand, there was this CBSSports.com report quoting one of its reporters, Jon Heyman: “Heyman also notes that the finalists to land Fielder were the Nationals, Tigers and” – look out, here it comes – “one other ‘mystery team.’”

It is no surprise that Heyman would cite a mystery team that no one else knew about, even if he didn’t identify the team. Heyman, according to an Associated Press report on the Fielder signing, “first reported the agreement with Fielder.”

That Heyman is first with a major Boras signing has come to be expected in the baseball and reporting industries. There’s nothing wrong with a reporter having a good relationship with an agent, but the Heyman-Boras link has been so beneficial to Boras that years ago baseball executives told me they understood that Heyman was on Boras’ payroll.

Heyman denied that charge, but his reporting on Boras and Boras clients has continued to arouse suspicion. Heyman has recently moved from Sports Illustrated’s Web site to CBSSports.com, but his reputation has followed him. Researching Boras, I came across this item on a Web site called Tauntr.com:

Jon Heyman: Scott Boras’ Puppet

SI.com MLB reporter and MLB Network contributor Jon Heyman is one of the most recognized baseball journalists around. Heyman’s analysis generally falls flat, but his reporting is usually solid. When it comes to getting info from sources within the industry, in fact, he is among the best in the business. However, Heyman is also a complete puppet for famed agent Scott Boras, who constantly uses the SI scribe to leak information beneficial to his clients. Whether he is floating out a “mystery team” linked to a Boras client or trying to get one traded, he is usually the first to break the news that benefits players represented by the Boras Corporation. I will not go as far as to say that Heyman is on the Boras Corp. payroll, but each party benefits from the relationship. Boras of course helps his clients, in turn allowing him to generate more revenue for his business. Heyman, on the other hand, has first-hand access to one of the most powerful figures in baseball and, as a result, is the first to break many stories.

Rich Lederer of the Baseball Analysts broke down the interesting relationship in a great post a while back, but the trend has continued. And, though Heyman is more involved with Boras during the Hot Stove season, look for him to “break” some Boras-related stories as the trade deadline approaches.

In the interest of full disclosure, I can say that Boras has never leaked a signing or a trade or a story of any kind to me. I don’t even think he talks to me. He hasn’t returned a telephone call in a long time, and I didn’t bother calling him for this column.

Early on, we had a decent working relationship, but Boras came to dislike two things: he thought the questions I asked him were too tough, and he didn’t care for the questions I raised and the skepticism I expressed in what I wrote about him. I questioned, for example, his mystery teams.

What I do not question is his ability to get good contracts for his clients. While I do not always agree with his tactics, if a player seeks every last penny he can get, Boras will get it for him. He will also induce clubs to pay more than they want, and just when it seems as if Boras will fail to get his client a good deal, one materializes.

With Fielder, Boras got what he sought. Pujols did better with the Angels, signing a 10-year contract for $240 million, but no one expected Fielder to match that. He nevertheless did very well with 9 years and $214 million, an average of $23.8 million compared with $24 million for Pujols.

“Scott said from Day 1 it was going to be $200 million,” Doug Melvin, general manager of the Milwaukee Brewers, the only team Fielder has played for, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

After the Tigers signed Fielder, players and others praised owner Mike Ilitch for his willingness to spend lavishly on players to produce a championship team.  That practice, however, was slow in coming.

Ilitch already owned the Detroit Red Wings of the National Hockey League for 10 years when he bought the Tigers in 1992. For years he was financially more attentive to the Red Wings than he was to the Tigers.

In the first 14 full seasons of Ilitch’s ownership, the Tigers’ payroll was in the bottom half of the majors 10 times.  Ilitch didn’t start spending significant money until 2008, when the payroll rose above $100 million for the first time.

Ilitch’s increased spending has come with his advancing age. Now 82, Ilitch wants to win the World Series while he still owns the Tigers. His decision to sign Fielder was a large part of that ambition, but so was the disabling knee injury suffered during a winter workout by Victor Martinez, who is expected to miss all or most of the season.

As of Wednesday night, the Tigers had not acknowledged reaching agreement with Fielder. When I called general manager Dave Dombrowski to ask about Fielder, Brian Britten, media relations director, took the call and said, “The organization does not have any comment.”

Teams are not permitted to announce signings until players pass physical exams.

Maybe in this instance, Boras got lucky with the Martinez injury. But then, it would not be the first time Boras has been lucky. Branch rickey once said, “Luck is the residue of design.” And Tonya Harding got lucky just before the 1994 U.S. figure staking championships when Nancy Kerrigan suffered a knee injury.  Not that I’m suggesting anything …

How did Commissioner Bud Selig allow the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs to create the baseball farce of the year, and the year hadn’t even started? Let me count the ways.

• The commissioner allowed the Cubs’ pursuit of Theo Epstein, the Red Sox general manager, to overshadow Major League Baseball’s showcase event, a.k.a. the World Series.
• Selig allowed Epstein to abandon his unexpired contract and take the Cubs’ No. 1 baseball job with no agreement between the clubs on compensation for the Red Sox.
• He allowed the clubs to extend the deadline for completing an agreement on compensation for Epstein, then abandoned the deadline altogether.
• By telling reporters he expected to wind up with the compensation dispute on his desk, he virtually invited the teams not to reach agreement and leave the matter for him to decide.
• By allowing Epstein to go to the Cubs with the compensation issue unsettled, he put Epstein in position to negotiate his own compensation, a bizarre circumstance tantamount to having a player to be named later in a trade becoming the player who was traded for a player to be named. (It really happened once – Harry Chiti 1962.)

This is what you get when you allow a general manager or president of baseball operations to negotiate compensation for himself.

“You have to look at history and you have to look at the precedent involved and realize there is no precedent for major, major compensation here,” Epstein was quoted as saying.

That is Epstein’s assessment, and it obviously isn’t objective. The Cubs wanted him so badly that they created a title for him, and they agreed to pay him $18.5 million for 5 years. There was no precedent for that kind of treatment either, but the Cubs established the precedent so why couldn’t a precedent be established for what the Red Sox could get?

The Red Sox not surprisingly disagree with the Cubs’ view. They believe Epstein is more valuable to the Cubs than any previous manager or executive whose acquisition required compensation, citing the new title and the bulky contract.

In 1973, the Yankees hired Dick Williams to manage, but Charlie Finley, the Oakland owner, wouldn’t let him out of his contract because the Yankees refused to give Finley Otto Velez and Scott McGregor as compensation. Gabe Paul, the Yankees’ president, said they couldn’t give Finley the family jewels.

A few years later the Pittsburgh Pirates gave the Athletics their veteran catcher, Manny Sanguillen, so that Finley would release Chuck Tanner from his contract, freeing him to manage the Pirates.

Sanguillen was no slouch as compensation. The Pirates thought enough of him to get him back a year later.

In those Oakland instances, the owner was the one who was negotiating. He encountered trade troubles with Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, whom Finley called the “village idiot,” but not with his Tanner trade.

Selig has not been so addressed by any owner. But he is certain to displease the Cubs or the Red Sox, depending on his decision. He has also earned questions and criticism for allowing the issue to go on and on and on.

Add to his questionable steps the fact that Selig allowed the Cubs and the Red Sox to violate his rule on minority interviewing in their hiring of new executives. The Cubs hired Epstein as president of baseball operations and Jed Hoyer (at left) as general manager; the Red Sox promoted Ben Cherington, Epstein’s assistant, to general manager.

Epstein, Hoyer and Cherington have similar physical traits and gender. All are white males. Neither the Cubs nor the Red Sox interviewed anyone else, meaning they didn’t follow Selig’s rule that when hiring for decision-making positions, teams have to interview minority candidates,

Either the Cubs and the Red Sox violated the rule and Selig did nothing about it, or he exempted them from following it for reasons that have never been explained.

In addition, circumstances indicated that the Cubs – Epstein really, even before they hired him – tampered with Hoyer when he was still general manager of the San Diego Padres.

Selig’s policy has been not to pursue alleged tampering unless someone lodges a complaint. The Padres didn’t lodge a complaint about Hoyer, who seemed to have the Cubs’ job the instant they hired Epstein, so the commissioner felt he had no reason to investigate.

The Padres didn’t lodge a complaint because they had no problem with Hoyer leaving. They had Josh Byrnes on the scene to step into the general manager’s job, and he was the preferred choice of Jeff Moorad, the team’s chief executive officer, who when he was with Arizona, signed Byrnes to an eight-year contract as general manager.

It was recent enough that you probably remember the Cubs’ pursuit of Epstein that I referred to as a three-ring fiasco and Selig’s follies (surely Selig, a history buff, remembers Seward’s Folly, the United States’ purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million, about the price of a good utility infielder today. Selig earns three times that amount and gets expenses, too.)

The Cubs’ infatuation with Epstein burst into the public’s eye before the World Series and raged during the first two games despite Selig’s policy against clubs making major announcements or initiating major developments during the World Series.

The commissioner understandably doesn’t want anything detracting from the World Series, but he allowed the Cubs and their pursuit of Epstein, along with ancillary matters, to dominate baseball discussion through the first two games of the Series.

Finally, on the Series’ first open date, Oct. 21, the Cubs and the Red Sox issued a news release announcing Epstein’s move, although it had been reported a week earlier as having happened. “At some point you have to set a deadline,” a baseball official was quoted as saying.

“Out of respect for the World Series, both clubs have agreed to forego further comment,” the news release said.

The delay between unofficial reports and official announcement apparently was a result of the teams’ inability to agree on compensation. Looking back from this vantage point, it’s amusing to read what was written at the time about compensation.

“Compensation is expected to be settled sometime in the next 10 days,” one report said.

Ten Days? Three months later, the teams still have not agreed on compensation, and they have asked the commissioner to do their job for them.

What player trade would Selig allow to go forward if the teams hadn’t agreed on the players going to one of the teams? If the Red Sox traded Josh Beckett to the Cubs but the teams hadn’t agreed on the player or players the Red Sox would get in return, would Selig have allowed Beckett to pitch for the Cubs for three months, a whole half of a season?

Selig has let Epstein “pitch” or do whatever presidents of baseball operations do for three months without the Red Sox having received compensation for him or even knowing what they were getting in return for their former general manager.

Now an argument could be made that the Red Sox have only themselves to blame. They didn’t have to agree to let Epstein defect to the Cubs unless and until they knew what they were getting for him. The Red Sox could also have taken the position that this is what we want in exchange for Epstein and if you don’t want to give it to us, he will stay here and you can find a general manager elsewhere.

Last October, when the Epstein saga was at its hottest, it was suspected in some circles that the Red Sox wanted Epstein to leave, that he had worn out his welcome after nine years. Just a few hours before his departure was announced, I asked a Red Sox official if it were true that the club wanted him to leave.

“Did everything we could to keep him,” the official said. “That’s where he wanted to go.”

While it might have been true that Epstein wanted to go to the Cubs – he knew, after all, that the Cubs would give him a more lucrative contract than the Red Sox would have had they extended his contract – I don’t believe the Red Sox did everything they could to keep him or even that they wanted to keep him.

I suspect Epstein knew that, and it was one of the reasons he wanted to leave.

Epstein did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment generally but specifically on his being in the position of negotiating compensation for himself. Crane Kenney, the Cubs’ president, said through Peter Chase, the team’s media relations director, without confirming that the matter was in the hands of the commissioner, that he couldn’t speak about it.

I tried to get comment from Larry Lucchino, the Red Sox president and chief executive officer, but Pam Ganley, the Red Sox media relations director, said, “Since it’s in the hands of the commissioner he won’t be talking about it.”

I then tried again with Lucchino, sending him an e-mail in which I referred to his brother, with whom I had gone to school:

“I got your message that you can’t talk about the Theo compensation issue because it’s before the commissioner, but (1) it’s not as if this is a matter before, say, Judge Lucchino, and he has issued a gag order and (2) there are questions you could answer, if you chose to, without interfering with his decision.

“For example, why did the Red Sox agree to let Theo terminate his contract with them and leave for the Cubs before compensation had been agreed to? If, as John Henry said at the time, you guys wanted Theo to stay, why didn’t you say to the Cubs this is what it will cost to get us to release him from his contract; take it or leave it?

“The fact that you were willing to let him go without having agreed on compensation suggests that you were very willing to let him leave. Lucchino and Henry are too smart to do something that could backfire on them.”

Lucchino did not reply.

Selig, on the other hand, returned a telephone call, but he had nothing of substance to say either.

“You’d have to talk to the two clubs,” the commissioner said in a brief telephone conversation. “If I were them I wouldn’t talk about it.”

As the commissioner, he wouldn’t talk about it either, not the case or anything he did or didn’t do the past three months.

“I’m the judge,” he said. “It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to say anything.”

Come to think about it, nothing about this case has been appropriate.

HELP RAYS, FORGET MARLINS

A couple of times in recent years I have proposed altering the geography of Major League Baseball. My idea has been to lop Florida off the M.L.B. map.

Given the remarkable success of the Tampa Bay Rays, the suggestion might be unfair for them. The Florida Marlins, on the other hand, would not likely be missed.

The Marlins’ succession of owners has discouraged south Florida fans and given them little confidence in the franchise’s future. The Marlins’ best hope is their new park. New parks attract additional fans, bur mainly for one season. Fans will go to games to see a new park, but the team has to win to get them to return the second and third years.

That’s part of the challenge the Marlins face even before they unveil their new park. Another part of the challenge is retaining their best players. The Marlins have created a history of shedding their best players, and they shouldn’t have to do that with the appearance of the new park.

With the Marlins, though, you never know.

The Rays are a different story. Owner Stu Sternberg and his Wall Street recruits, including general manager Andrew Friedman, have begun writing a remarkable story on the west coast of Florida, turning around baseball’s most ineptly run franchise and turning a series of high-round draft choices into a contending team.

Even when they had to shed some high-priced players, such as they did a year ago, they have managed to maintain their winning ways. They are the Florida team that should get a new park because they have earned it. But they won’t get it because no one has the money to build it and they are stuck in the worst park in the majors.

Last week members of the St. Petersburg city council voted unanimously to make themselves ambassadors of the team to increase attendance at Tropicana Park. It might turn out to be just a bunch of talk, but the politicians have to do something tangible and effective if the Rays are to remain a viable part of the Tampa Bay community.

Sternberg and his aides have done their part, and the area’s fans should recognize a good job when they see it. If the fans ignore what the Rays have done, they will have only themselves to blame for the demise of a team that has overcome the original owner, Vince Naimoli, and has become a serious challenger to the far wealthier Yankees and Red Sox.

BRAUN’S TEST INSPIRES SILLINESS

Ryan Braun, last season’s National League most valuable player, may lose his appeal of a positive drug test and accompanying 50-game suspension, though for some reason I think he will be exonerated. But too many of the people who are trusted by readers and viewers to be responsible in their coverage of drug developments are still too hasty to condemn and convict.

The coverage of Braun’s positive test for an allegedly illegal level of testosterone provides a good example why people have reason to question what reporters do.

Under baseball’s testing program for performance-enhancing substances, initial positive tests are supposed to be confidential pending the outcome of an appeal if the player wants to appeal. In Braun’s case, an ESPN reporter found out that he tested positive, and it became one of the biggest stories of the off-season because he had won the M.V.P. award only days earlier.

In the eyes of many reporters and fans, Braun was immediately guilty. Maybe he was, but he had yet to file an appeal to challenge the test result. Baseball’s arbitrator, Shyam Das, may reject Braun’s appeal, which he heard last week, and uphold the positive test result and the suspension.

But Das could also rule in Braun’s favor. What then? Will everyone who instantly thought him guilty say oops, I was wrong? Not very likely. There would always be people who believe him to be guilty.

Even worse, there was this recent ludicrous suggestion by an ESPN writer. Buster Olney noted that Braun would be appearing at the annual dinner of the New York chapter of the Baseball Writers Association last Saturday night to accept his M.V.P. award.

“The best chance for Braun to extricate something good from his situation would be to stand up on the dais Saturday, hold the NL MVP trophy in his hands – and offer to give it back to the Baseball Writers’ Association of America at its annual New York dinner, even while maintaining his innocence. This gesture would elevate Braun and separate him from the legions of athletes who have issued denials in the face of accusations of performance-enhancing drug use.”

Olney even offered a statement that Braun could make. “Braun could say something along these lines when he speaks Saturday night :”

That’s all I was able to read. Only paying subscribers could go further, and I’ll be darned if I’m going to pay to read such nonsense, that even an innocent person who deserved the award should say, in effect, I’m innocent and the arbitrator will tell you that I am, but just in case you still think I’m guilty, I’ll give up the award to satisfy you and all of the others who think I’m guilty.

I have one question for my former colleague: If Braun were guilty but still returned the award to fool people into thinking he wasn’t guilty, would that be an acceptable approach?

GOOD LUCK, GARY

Gary Carter’s condition was found last week to have worsened. Doctors found more tumors on his brain, where a malignant glioblastoma tumor was discovered last May. I would like to comment on Carter’s circumstances, but I have unfortunately learned too much about brain tumors to write about the Hall of Fame catcher now.

I wish Carter well and hope that his doctors find the right drug or combination of drugs to arrest the tumors.