Idiots Write About Sports

A few weeks back David Schoenfield, one of the few remaining bright lights over at ESPN.com, did a bit on public enemies for baseball fans — the player who has generated the most collective animus among fans of a particular team. Sometimes it’s an opposing player, sometimes it’s a particularly hateful owner or executive… and sometimes it’s a guy wearing your colors who does nothing successfully but make your blood boil.

It’s a good concept for a column, but I feel Schoenfield made a slight miscalculation in his selection for the public enemy of A’s fans — Jeremy Giambi.

The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Oakland nine that day/The score stood 1 to zero, with but a few innings left to play/So upon that stricken multitude, sat grim melancholy’s fate;/for there seemed but little chance of the A’s getting to the plate/But Giambi let drive a single, to the wonderment of all./ And Long, the much despised, tore the cover off the ball … Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright./The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light./And, somewhere men are laughing, and little children hide,/but there is no joy in Oakland – mighty Giambi has failed to slide.

It’s a clever write-up, but it ignores three essential counterpoints.

• No one would ever seriously argue that Jeremy Giambi was anything other than what he was — a big slug of a ballplayer whose only known talent was finding a way to get on base. No Oakland fan ever pinned their hopes and dreams on Jeremy Giambi.

• Giambi was sent packing less than half a season after the incident described above, thus sparing A’s fans from any further exposure to his general sub-mediocrity. What’s more, Giambi netted Oakland the surprisingly useful John Mabry, who played a key part in securing the team’s 2002 division title. So let’s consider that a mitigating factor.

• Giambi was actually safe on that play, and any failure to acknowledge the possibility that the ump may have blown the call just feeds the global pro-Yankee conspiracy of which ESPN is a willing and happy dupe.

No, you want a public enemy for the A’s, I’ll give you a guy who not only made a horrific post-season blunder that cost Oakland the chance to advance into the ALCS, but who continued committing boneheaded plays for another season-and-a-half — all the while being praised by reporters and fans for his supposed energy and hustle.

I give you Eric Byrnes.

Nearly two years after the fact, I still cannot watch the clip of Byrnes failing to touch home-plate in Game Three of the divisional series against Boston without becoming blinded by rage. It’s not just that Byrnes missed the plate initially — that stuff happens, until we figure out a way to field a baseball team comprised entirely of automatons and replicants. It’s that sissy-boy shove he tries to give Varitek — when he should be more concerned about going back and touching the plate — allowing the Boston catcher ample opportunity to tag him out. And then when he affects that ridiculous limp as if he’s thinking “Maybe if I look like I was injured on that plate, people will ignore my obvious brain fart,” well, I just lose all composure. Even thinking about it now, I… I….

Sorry. I had to spend the last 15 minutes, stomping around my apartment and breaking things to calm myself down.

Wait… it gets worse. Because, after all, mental mistakes happen. It’s how someone reacts to them, how he makes sure to never make the same mistake again that marks his evolution as a ballplayer. Byrnes’ response, as quoted in this February 8, 2004 article from Susan Slusser:

Plenty of people have mentioned it to me. Obviously, I would have liked to touch the plate. Oh, well, I can laugh it off now.

Well, as long as you can laugh it off, I guess blowing a playoff game isn’t that big a deal.

Putz.

Lest you think I’m being too hard on Byrnes for one little mistake, it’s not as if the subsequent season-and-a-half has been notable for smart, heads-up baseball from our spastic outfielder. For every highlight reel catch that Byrnes has made, I can cite two plays where he missed the cutoff man, misjudged a fly ball, or, turned a single into an extra-base hit by trying to make a spectacular play when an ordinary one would do.

Case in point: I attended a Sox-A’s game this past April in which Byrnes was in rare form. In the fourth, he overthrew the cutoff man on an Aaron Rowland single, a misplay that the Sox were unable to take advantage of. The A’s weren’t so fortunate in the sixth. Byrnes butchered what should have been a fly-ball out by Juan Uribe — he “apparently lost the ball in the lights,” the wire story dutifully reports — allowing Uribe to reach second and a run to score. Later, that same inning, Byrnes fielded a Scott Podsednik single and threw the ball to third base — where no one was actually standing; the miscue allowed Podsednik to advance to second where he scored on the next play.

It wouldn’t be accurate to call that a Little League play. Most Little Leaguers know not to throw the ball where there’s not another fielder.

And yet, despite ample evidence that whatever Byrnes contributes to A’s victories is almost entirely negated by his constant blunders, he’s continually lauded for his hustle. Stephen Canella called him the most exciting player in baseball, which, when you think about, is a double-edged compliment. I suppose it’s exciting that any ball hit to left field could become a Web Gem just as easily as it becomes a hideous disaster… but speaking as a fan of the team whose fortunes ride on that “exciting” player, I’d much prefer the dull, predictable guy who catches routine fly balls, if it’s all the same to you.

(It’s worth noting that the photo that accompanies Canella’s article shows Byrnes diving — or, alternately, falling flat on his face — to catch a baseball. It should not suprise anyone that the ball is nowhere in the vicinity of Byrnes’ glove.)

I know I’ve said this before, but hustle that does nothing to actually help your team win is false hustle. Effort that consistently turns singles into doubles, fly balls into outs, and clutch hits into rally-killing strikeouts on pitches three feet out of the zone is wasted effort. And Byrnes is the league-leader in both these categories.

So the news that Eric Byrnes has been traded to Colorado — apparently Jay Payton isn’t passing through town after all, despite what a guy who looks a lot like me may have written — shouldn’t be greeted with sadness by anyone who actually wants to see the A’s win. If anything, A’s fans should be volunteering to accompany Byrnes to Denver, just to make sure the the deal gets completed.

Byrnes is a fourth-outfielder type who had outlived his usefulness to Oakland. He may benefit somewhat from the rarefied air of Coors Field — how fitting is it that a guy with an inflated reputation for hustle is getting sent to a park that will inflate his offensive numbers as well? — but he wasn’t going to contribute in any meaningful way to the stretch run this season. And he certainly had no role in 2006, which is where Oakland’s focus should be, anyhow. He will not be missed, except by the handful of school-girls who coo about how dreamy he is. Actual fans should thank Byrnes for his contributions the past few seasons, while breathing a sigh of relief that he’s gone.

I have no idea if Jay Witasick or Joe Kennedy — the two players received in return for Byrnes — will have provide anything worthwhile to Oakland. My gut tells me that Witasick probably will not. (My co-worker Curt this morning joked that Witasick was probably the guy holding the bag of used baseballs the A’s acutally acquired from the Rockies.) Kennedy may turn out to be a worthy addition — he’s shown some promise as a starter, though not very recently.

Nevertheless, as long as Witasick and Kennedy don’t miss home plate during a playoff series, they’re all right by me.

Completely agree. Have you read Yard Work's take?
http://baseballtonight.blogspot.com/2005/07/byrnes-calls-odowd-trades-himself-to.html

In fact, I did... seconds before you posted your comment, oddly enough.

The Yard Work story probably merits its own entry.

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