The first news conference I ever attended was Aug. 26, 1970.

Terrorists had bombed a building at the University of Wisconsin and one man inside had died. The news conference was held by the chief of UW security.

In the 42 years since then I have attended or seen literally thousands of news conferences. Post-game, post-election, post-scandal, post-anything. Some have been memorable. Most have been forgettable.

Never in my entire experience have I seen a news conference as impressive as the one given by Ryan Braun Friday afternoon in Arizona.

He was intelligent, knowledgeable, articulate, emotional, dripping with frankness and honesty, thankful, tough, resilient and sympathetic. It was a spectacular performance created with little pomp but lots of circumstance. The hugs from his teammates, the literate response to questions, all combined to create, as I said, the best news conference performance I have ever seen.

How come, then, I don't totally believe Ryan Braun, even though I want to?

I think it was his urine that got tested and I think it did have a lot of that artificial testosterone in it.

All the other questions in this matter remain almost extraneous and unanswered to me.

Let's face it. The people who created and administer this drug policy are the union and the owners. That is kind of like getting Margaritaville and North Korea to form an alliance.

Their rules say if the crap is in your urine you get suspended. Whether you ingested it yourself, tried to juice, had it in your vitamins, mistakenly sprinkled it on your morning oatmeal, took it for teenage acne or had someone put it in your Dr. Pepper as a joke. None of that matters. If it's there, you get suspended.

I know that Braun and his team focused on that delay in sending in the sample. What I would like to know is how many other samples have been delayed over the course of this drug testing. I bet it's in the hundreds. The people who would know swear that the Braun sample was not tampered with.

Braun and his team obviously began to cast suspicion on the guy who collected the sample, Dino Laurenzi, who is a health care professional from Pleasant Prairie. This guy is no schlup. He has a BA in athletic training from the University of Wisconsin and a masters in medicine and athletic training from the University of North Carolina and an MBA from Loyola-Chicago.

The only obvious bad guy in this whole thing is the guy or girl who leaked the results of the test. You can't blame ESPN because there isn't a news organization in the world that wouldn't have run with the story. But whoever leaded the story deserves shame and prosecution. The release of Braun's medical records is a crime and should be treated as such.

All of the other stuff in this story just doesn't seem that important.

For example, there's a lot of talk about the chain of custody being broken. Nonsense. Laurenzi didn't give it to anyone else or leave it in his car or in his backpack or on a counter at Pick 'n Save. He kept possession and then he delivered it to FedEx. The chain of custody was maintained.

Let's say a cop gets some evidence at a murder scene. Do you think he holds it in his hand until the trial? Of course not, but the chain of custody is preserved even though he leaves it in a locker or an evidence room or somewhere. There is no strict time limit for sending the urine sample to FedEx, even though there are recommendations.

I hope this story goes away. I really believe that Ryan Braun was not juicing. I really believe the testosterone got into his system by mistake. But my fear is that baseball feels threatened by the outcome of this case and a threatened baseball can be a dangerous beast.

I said that Braun's news conference was the best I ever saw. The only mistake in judgement that was made was that his side accused the drug testing program of being "fatally flawed." That makes baseball angry.

Bud Selig thinks that the MLB drug testing program is something that is in "the best interests of baseball" and he has, I am sure, every intention of proving that the program is, as he says frequently, the best one in professional sports.

And Braun may fall squarely in his sights when the big leagues fight back.