By now you have probably read and laughed over Ryan Braun's halting 130-word statement-slash-apology to baseball, which was so comically awkward and tin-eared it appears to have been written by a robot stoned on allergy medication.

Still, Braun's mea-ish culpa deserves praise as a masterpiece of the form—a Mona Lisa of 21st century PED statement imprecision. Almost all of these "apologies" are terrible, seemingly lawyered to the limit, muddied with vague language and half-truths. Braun took his to another level,...