Melky Cabrera cover-up attempt: Well, it was worth a try

Melky Cabrera did the right thing. Eventually.

Last week the Giants outfielder was suspended 50 games by Major League Baseball after a positive drug test. Cabrera almost immediately released a statement admitting his “use of a substance I should not have used� and that he would not fight the suspension.

Good for him. If you’ve done something wrong, just come clean. Not only is it the right thing to do morally, but it’s a great PR move. Just ask Andy Pettitte. Plus, he wouldn’t be wasting everyone’s time and resources with an appeal, hoping to get off on a technicality like a certain 2011 National League MVP may or may not have done.

Maybe ol’ Melky isn’t such a bad guy after all. Everyone makes mistakes.

Um, well, it turns out there may have been another step or two between Cabrera’s positive test and his admirable statement. According to multiple reports, an associate of the Giants’ slugger was caught by MLB trying to create false evidence that Cabrera had taken the banned substance inadvertently.

Juan Nunez, who works with Cabrera’s agents, purchased an existing website, then tried to make it look like Cabrera obtained the substance through that site and, therefore, that everything was on the up-and-up, according to reports initially run by the New York Daily News.

Brilliant!

“If you create a new website, you would know when the website was created,� an anonymous baseball official told the Associated Press. “At least they were smart enough to buy an existing website.�

Cabrera is represented by brothers Sam and Seth Levinson of the sports management company ACES, which has claimed that it and Cabrera had nothing to do with the plot by Nunez. In the Daily News, the Levinsons described Nunez as a “paid consultant� for the firm.

“The MLBPA has clearly stated that ACES has no connection to the website or this matter and, as reported, Juan Nunez has taken full responsibility for his acts,� Seth Levinson told the Associated Press. “There is nothing more we can add and we will allow our reputation in the industry for 27 years to speak for itself.�

The AP’s source said that an MLB team of up to seven investigators spent several weeks looking into the alleged cover-up plan -- in which case, Cabrera’s public admission to his own wrong-doings apparently came after the cover-up scheme had been blown apart.

Oh, well. It was worth a try. Might as well bend another rule or two to keep an MVP candidate in the lineup during a heated pennant race, right?

Somewhere in all of this there’s an important lesson: Just do the right thing ... eventually.

ALSO:

Giants’ Melky Cabrera is suspended for 50 games

Report: Cabrera associate tried to fabricate evidence

Melky Cabrera suspension doesn’t mean Dodgers can celebrate