(above : frontrunner for the job of Melky’s new agent after he fires the Levinson brothers)

Giants OF Melky Cabrera quickly issued an apology / confession upon being suspended for 50 games by Major League Baseball earlier this week for PED use.  If you were tempted to praise the Melk Man for taking ownership of his offense, you might be interested to know the New York Daily News’ quintet of Terri Thompson, Bill Madden, Christian Red, Michael O’Keefe and Nathaniel Vinton are claiming the player and his handlers conspired to “create a fictitious website and a nonexistent product,” fashioning a spectacular, if ultimately unsuccessful alibi.

The scheme began unfolding in July as Cabrera and his representatives scrambled to explain a spike in the former Yankee’s testosterone levels. Cabrera associate Juan Nunez, described by the player’s agents, Seth and Sam Levinson, as a “paid consultant” of their firm but not an “employee,” is alleged to have paid $10,000 to acquire the phony website. The idea, apparently, was to lay a trail of digital breadcrumbs suggesting Cabrera had ordered a supplement that ended up causing the positive test, and to rely on a clause in the collectively bargained drug program that allows a player who has tested positive to attempt to prove he ingested a banned substance through no fault of his own.

“There was a product they said caused this positive,” one source familiar with the case said of Cabrera’s scheme. “Baseball figured out the ruse pretty quickly.

MLB’s department of investigations quickly began asking questions about the website and the “product” — Where was the site operating from? Who owned it? What kind of product was it? — and quickly discovered that an existing website had been altered, adding an ad for the product, a topical cream, that didn’t exist.