Ryan Braun has it all, he’s the reigning NL MVP, he’s got a sick scruff beard that would be the envy of any zit faced 13 year old boy, and according to Major League Baseball, he’s twice the man as you or me… no literally, he’s TWICE the man.

During a random drug test that was administered to Braun during the playoffs last year, it was found that the eventual National League Most Valuable Player had DOUBLE the amount of testosterone than a normal man of equal or less scruffiness.

Major League Baseball immediately jumped to the conclusion that Mr. Braun is guilty of breaking one of baseball’s most recent sacred rules, and I’m not talking about urinating on George Steinbrenner’s grave. It seems that if the initial test findings are upheld, then Ryan Braun would be suspended for the first 50 games of the Milwaukee Brewers 2012 season.

Steroids have been a black cloud over baseball for almost as decade as many of the high home run numbers of the 1990’s were assumed to be the result of a needle. In this day and age of strict testing by Major League Baseball, it’s hard to believe that a player would risk his reputation and potentially his career by juicing up.

After the story broke of the Milwaukee slugger’s positive test, it seemed that a “Fox News” style spin team was on the case on behalf of Braun, trying to cast doubt on MLB’s handling of the sample and assure the public that the only performance enhancer any Brewer took apart of during the playoffs last year was Prince Fielder’s double decker Italian sausage sandwich topped with onions, mayo and fried cheese curd.

If the positive test is upheld, the main question that needs to be asked by Major League Baseball, fans, players, and owners alike is should a player who is found guilty of using performance enhancing drugs during an award winning season face the possibility of having his award stripped away for cheating. Obviously up to this point, no Major Leaguer has had any of their numbers or records stripped away for using PED’s. However, current penalties for using PED’s have just come into existence over the past few seasons and even players that were found to have used them in the past, like Alex Rodriguez, didn’t face any punishment by Major League Baseball.

This is the first time that a significant major leaguer in the prime of their career has tested positive for a PED and if the initial test is upheld, then Commissioner Bud Selig, could and should make a real statement against the use of illegal substances in baseball and strip Braun of his National League MVP and award it to Matt Kemp of the Dodgers who finished second in MVP voting to Braun.

Of course, Commissioner Selig has never been one to do anything to the detriment of his beloved Brewers and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was found that the test was a false positive or that there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for the fact that Braun was found to have twice the amount of testosterone as any player that’s ever been tested, hell, maybe he’s got 4 balls.

Photo: Getty

Maybe this is what separates the die hard baseball fan from the casual baseball fan.  Maybe if I was a true, blue baseball fan I’d watch the Post-season no matter who was playing.  So maybe this is the time for me to confess that I’ve (gulp) kind of stopped watching this year’s LCS.  Not because it’s not competitive (I wouldn’t really know, I haven’t paid attention), but because I’m just not interested.  And it pains me to say this because I feel like this contradicts everything I believe in, but…

I need my big market teams!

I need the big bad favorite.  The team expected to overwhelm everyone with their payroll and their pitching.  I need the Bronx Bombers.  I need the increasingly annoying Red Sox Nation.  Boston collapsed their way out of the post-season before they could get in.  Philadelphia and New York were bounced out before they could even think about a 2009 World Series rematch.  And just like that, a scintillating Division Series round — which saw no sweeps, and three game fives (all pitchers duels too), led us to this dreary, dark, totally aggravating fact about the sport: by the end no traditional super-powers stood standing, and there was enough feel-good stories to make Disney weep. Translation: you lost my interest Major League Baseball.

Baseball’s playoffs follow almost parallel to the NCAA Tournament.  We love watching the super-powers square off, or the underdog take on Hercules.  But two underdogs a compelling game or series does not make.  I don’t make up the rules, that’s just how it goes.   People love a feel good story, but when everyone is a feel good story, it’s no longer fun.  It’s dry. It feels sort of pointless.  These aren’t the best 4 teams in baseball, I’m convinced of that.  Both top records from the regular season are gone.  You have a team that was middling and mediocre scratching on the door of the World Series. It feels kinda phony.

But this is the last pair of cards the 2011 Post-season has dealt.

St. Louis is a great story, but they’ve been here so often, we’re sort of sick of them.  But their comeback was so amazing that it’s impossible to hate them.  Plus their hometown hero may be on his way out the door — we don’t know — so you almost have to feel nervous for Cardinals fans, who know that without Phat Albert, their title hopes go splat.  Herein lies the problem though.  Their opposition is the Brewers, a team who pretty much knows their great slugger is gone, and is playing a lameduck — albeit fairy-tale post-season run.  The Brewers won their first playoff series since 1982 when they knocked out the pesky Dbacks in 5.  While they may be brash and obnoxious at times, hating on the Brewers is like telling your kid there’s no tooth fairy (when he’s 3!) Let the kid enjoy himself, just like the Brewers have the right to enjoy this ride (they may not get this tour through the playoffs for a while after this).

It’s too much feeling good for my taste.

In the A.L. you have Texas, on the verge of another AL Pennant, but they over-came the loss of Cliff Lee in the off-season, and the fact that they were actually bankrupt just a few years ago.  Hometown owner Nolan Ryan was a legend with the team, and before last year’s magical run they had never won a playoff series! Never, evahh! They do however reside in Texas, but unlike the Cowboys or the Longhorns, there’s not a whole lot of brash in Texas. Seriously, when they win, they celebrate by opening ginger ale for former alcoholic Josh Hamilton. Hard to hate on that.  Meanwhile, the Tigers are banged up in all kinds of key positions, Jim Leyland cries after unknown players have incredible moments, and Detroit fans relish in the fact that they finally have something to cheer about.  The Tigers have become the biggest underdog in this post-season if you ask me, but that’s just among a pool of under-dogs.

It just makes for a post-season that no longer has that buzz that it did when the big-boys were in play.  And you know FOX has to be dreading a potential Rangers-Brewers World Series. If you thought the ratings for Rangers-Giants in ‘10 were bad, just wait for that series — if it happens.

That’s not to say this has been a bad post-season.  Just a forgettable one as far as the LCS is concerned. I don’t even like big market teams, but even I wish they were still here. If for nothing else, then to root against them.

SCOTT JACOBS

The Brewers are having an atrocious off-season.  Unless you live in Ethiopia you know by now that the Yankees laughed at Milwaukee’s $100 million offer to C.C. Sabathia and then trumped it by $61 million and two additional years.  Bye bye to the ace of the staff, who the Brewers gave up so much for just to give themselves a shot to get into the post-season (which they did).  Ben Sheets appears to be next, as the Brewers will not be bringing back the injury riddled pitcher, who when healthy has great stuff, but isn’t hardly ever healthy.  Mike Cameron is reportedly getting shipped out of town, and there are people who even think the Brewers may deal superstar Prince Fielder because they can’t afford the growing price tag he is soon going to command (did we mention his agent is Scott Boras?  Cause he is).

And after their first playoff trip since 1982, the Brewers are watching everything fall back to reality.  Hard!  Such is the nature of being a small market club in Major League Baseball.  The Brewers had their moment last year, while capturing the masses love and attention in Milwaukee.  But that dream was derailed when the Phillies took out Milwaukee in the first round, and now the window is not only closed on a World Series dream for the Brewers, it’s locked, and the key is buried somewhere in the Northeast.

And on top of that, the Brewers recently lost a sponsor, when Mercedes said it is not going to renew it’s naming rights to the picnic area in right field of Miller Park.  Nothing Brewer related we’re told, but man, when it rains it pours.  Yeah, it probably has more to do with the sagging economy more so than the crappy team Milwaukee will be putting on the field next year, but still, it certainly doesn’t help.

Such is the nature that the Brewers are used to. They are a small market team that can only pick it’s spots, not take over them, when they see a manageable opportunity to compete.  While the Yanks blow their offer (and just about everybody else’s) out of the water the Brewers watch their playoff aspirations sink a little deeper.

And ya know what?  I’m sick of this!  Buster Olney wrote this about the Brewers’ iminnent demise from relevence:

There’s no one to blame, unless you care to find the places where the founding fathers of Major League Baseball are buried and lecture their headstones for the way the sport is structured financially, with built-in advantages for the most popular big-city teams. The Yankees are working within their much greater means to compete for a title, as they should, and so are the Cubs, who figure to soon get Jake Peavy, and so are the Mets and the Red Sox. The Brewers, Twins, Athletics, Indians and other clubs have to operate almost flawlessly, and have some good luck along the way, in order to compete.

Even if that’s true, which it is, it’s messed up.  The Rays will be very good most likely for a few years, and then their talent will head north or far west, because that’s where the financially powered franchises are.  The issue is that while the Yankees wipe their behinds with 100 dollar bills, teams like the Brewers are left to scrap together the cash they save from cheaper gas.

There was a report that the Brewers didn’t have money to spend right now, and this came after they lost C.C.  There is something seriously wrong with that.  It’s the type of reason that I openly root for fine oiled machines built off of the best money can buy to fail (such as the Yankees).  Yes, they’re fun to hate.  But they’re also like that only child who doesn’t know how to share, and hogs everything to himself, offering a scrap of his stuff every now and then.  And while the Yankees pick from the best of the best, most of baseball’s teams are left to pick at the scraps.

The sports’ salaries are out of control.  Mark Teixiera doesn’t deserve $200 million, but I’d be shocked at this point if he didn’t get it.  C.C. didn’t get $160 million like I originally thought.  No, he got $161 million.  Why you ask?  Because it makes him the highest paid pitcher per year by $100,000.  No, he couldn’t be tied with Johan Santana, he had to eclipse him.  While you go out and look for a second job so that the bank doesn’t forclose your house, C.C. and other high profile names on the free agency market suck up every last penny that’s on the table.

Once upon the time it wasn’t about just money.  There was loyalty, there was the desire to help your team.

Now, it’s a joke.  Guys say they want to be team players, and they want to win.  But they just want the money.  Because yeah, small market teams like the Marlins won’t pay much, but if guys were that determined to make their small market teams winners they would take major pay cuts from what they could get on the open market.  But that hardly ever happens.

Because baseball players live in a surreal world.  For the rest of us reality couldn’t be more different.

SCOTT JACOBS

The Yankees found out earlier this week that nothing lasts forever.  The Mets are wondering why they keep getting trampled by the Marlins, who stomped on New York’s post-season hopes for the second year in a row.

That means, that the Milwaukee Brewers, who beat the Chicago Cubs behind another brilliant performance from C.C. Sabathia 3-1, are going to the playoffs for the first time, since 1982!

For the Mets and their fans, it was another devastating way to close the season. New York looked well on its way to a playoff spot (and redemption) a couple weeks ago, but yesterday the Phillies sealed off another NL East crown, and today, the Marlins dusted off the “ol’ does any team play in bigger in games that you’re not supposed to win” jerseys to end Shea Stadium.

So here’s how the NL Playoffs will look.  Two teams from the same division cannot face each other in the first round, so here are the NLDS matchups:

3) Los Angeles Dodgers versus 1) Chicago Cubs
4) Milwaukee Brewers versus 2) Philadelphia Phillies

I said at the beginning of the year, that the only way the Mets don’t win the division is if they collapse again.  Well, they did.  More interestingly though our the picks we made at around the All-Star Break .  Surprisingly, some of us did very well.

SCOTT JACOBS

That took a long time.

A day after the Brewers pulled off the “please get us in the playoffs, it’s been 25 years, and we want to pee our pants” trade for CC Sabathia, the Chicago Cubs sat on their heels did nothing for 24 hours, and then completed their own mega-trade, landing Athletics’ pitcher Rich Harden.

In unrelated news, the NBA’s Western Conference wants their story-lines back. What’s next? The Cardinals bringing Roger Clemens out of retirement? The Pirates signing Barry Bonds to get them over the .500 mark?

We haven’t even hit the All Star break, yet the two biggest names to switch jerseys have probably already been etched in leather.

Sabathia. Harden. Cubs. Brewers.

If nothing else, this ought to be fun.

The Brewers went for broke dealing for Sabathia, the 2007 CY Young award winner. They dealt some very good prospects to Cleveland for the right to rent the massive pitcher for a few months. Milwaukee was so desperate that they traded for Sabathia weeks before the trading deadline, just so they could shove a pair of starts in before the All Star break for their newest star. After all, when he leaves at the end of the year the Brewers get a couple draft picks in return. Hopefully by then, the Brewers will still be celebrating some kind of playoff success.

Now onto the Cubs. With their trade for the very talented, but oft-injured Harden, the Cubs have positioned themselves to not only make the playoffs, but to make a deep run. Chicago is already 17 games above .500, and their 475 runs scored are second only to the Rangers.

Clearly they can hit. Now, there’s little doubt they can pitch.

Adding Harden (5-1, 2.34 ERA in 13 starts) to the mix gives Chicago so many quality arms that they now just might have the best overall rotation in the league.

You decide:

Carlos Zambrano: 9-3, 2.96 ERA
Ryan Dempster: 9-3, 3.24 ERA
Ted Lilly: 9-5, 4.47 ERA
Jason Marquis: 6-5, 4.78 ERA

The two trades look great on paper. Then again, so did the Mets.

The NL Central was a mediocre fight in 2007 between two very underwhelming teams: the Cubs and the Brewers. In 2008, barring a St. Louis fade, the Central figures to be an exciting three team race. Think of the NL Central as last year’s NL West, and think of the NL West as last year’s Central. Basically, the divisions have swapped places.

And nowhere are they happier then in Wisconsin and the Windy City.

Ya know what, I think I like that title. Sorta catchy, no?

Wisconsin and the Windy City: Part 1, with many more to come.

At least for this year at least. Because while the Brewers take their rental for a spin this week, Harden is under contract for 2009 and is making a paltry $4.75 million this year. Sabathia is most likely one and done, expected to command Johan Santana money, and some team (ignoring Santana’s over bloated contract) will pay it to him. It just won’t be the Brewers.

And with Ben Sheets a free agent too, this is Milwaukee’s window to end 25 years of no playoffs: a half a season.

The Cubs are staring up at a bigger number: 100. As in, if they don’t win a World Series this year they hit the grand ol’ century mark for infamy. The Brewers… well, they’ve never even won a title. Though, they did get to the Fall Classic in 1982, incidentally they last time they made the playoffs at all.

Back to the Cubs. Again, it should be pointed out that Harden is no sure thing. The A’s loved him when he came up, and he was great– when healthy. Which isn’t often. Harden’s made six trips to the DL in six years in the bigs. Not exactly cute numbers.

But for what Chicago gave up, a disappointing Matt Murton who isn’t exactly tearing the cover off the baseball in Triple A hitting .250, and a few other prospects, they can afford to take a chance on the talented ace.

So it’s clear that long term the Cubs are in better shape. They can re-ink Harden if they so choose after this year or during the 2009 season. Though this does have a familiar tune to it.

After all, the Cubs used to rely on an oft-injured pitcher for years to keep alive their title hopes. His name was Mark Prior. And how’d that one work out?

So before you run out and buy World Series hotel reservations Cubs and Brewers fans, know this: this looks great on paper, but it only matters what happens on the field. Disappointment is possible. Anything can happen.

Then again, who am I kidding. Cubs and Brewers fans know that better then anybody!