I will never forget the moment I first heard Ryan Braun was facing a 50-game ban after testing positive for a performance-enhancing substance last October.

To say the least, I was as devastated as a sports fan can be.

It was even more crushing to me than when the Packers had their first loss this season, and this is coming from a guy who thought they might go undefeated for two or three years straight.

I know that might sound crazy, but it’s the honest truth.

I just kept thinking to myself, how could this be?

Braun was supposed to be MLB’s poster boy for a new steroid-free era in baseball. After more than a decade of juiced ballplayers whose necks were larger than most people’s thighs, baseball had finally started to clean up its act.

Then came this news that Braun had tested positive for a PED and everything changed again.

Or did it?

In case you were on another planet, it was announced last week that Braun was exonerated after successfully winning his appeal of the suspension. It was a moment I not only anxiously awaited, but that I expected.

Even after a successful appeal, some fans and members of the media still seem to think he only got off on a technicality. These are probably the same people who still think JFK was killed by the U.S. government.

Let me first point out that there is absolutely zero evidence that he ever took a PED.

That’s right: zero evidence.

The only thing Braun is guilty of is having that awful hair, but that’s beside the point.

You see, the only evidence that ever existed to implicate Braun was a single urine sample.

A sample that showed Braun’s urine had three times the amount of testosterone found in any drug test ever administered by MLB, including that of known steroid users.

As soon as Braun found out he tested positive for elevated testosterone levels, he immediately requested another test, which came back clean.

Now think about that. How is that even humanly possible?

The simple answer is, it’s not.

Like Braun pointed out in the press conference after winning his appeal, the Brewers weigh their players at least once a week. Because of this, Braun was able to prove he hadn’t even gained a single pound leading up to the positive test.

I hate to break it to all the ‘haters’ out there, but Braun did not get off on a technicality. Something happened with Braun’s urine sample, and we may never know exactly what.

You see, MLB has specific guidelines for how urine samples must be handled, and the collector in Braun’s case did not follow these guidelines. According to Braun, the collector left with his sample around 5 p.m. on a Saturday.

Although the Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment program states that samples must be taken to FedEx immediately on the day they are collected, Braun’s was not.

“There were at least five FedEx locations within five miles of the stadium that were open until 9 p.m. and an additional FedEx location that was open for 24 hours,” Braun said during his press conference. “There were upwards of 18 or 19 FedEx locations that were open between the ballpark and his house that he could have dropped the samples off at.”

Instead the collector waited a 44-hour period and turned the sample into FedEx on Monday at 1:30 p.m. Why would the collector do that?

Well, the collector — who has since stepped forward — said he brought the sample home and left it in a container in his basement for that period of time. To defend his actions the collector said, “There have been other occasions when I have had to store samples in my home for at least one day, all without incident.”

Good argument, guy. Just because nothing bad had happened before doesn’t mean it can’t.

That’s exactly why MLB has their collection protocol in place, so there aren’t any questions in a situation like this.

Maybe the collector is being entirely honest and really has done this in the past with no issues. Or, maybe the collector allowed some kind of tampering to happen with Braun’s sample.

The problem is that we will literally never know.

Having a test thrown out because it wasn’t conducted properly is not getting off on a ‘technicality.’ It’s the system working how it was supposed to.