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Byrnes living the dream, even out of MLB

Updated May 12, 2010 1:51 PM ET

Eric Byrnes is, by his own admission, a “career journeyman.” He is also a very wealthy man. Byrnes earned roughly $40 million in a major league career that apparently ended with his release by the Seattle Mariners two Sundays ago.

He will make $11 million this year, even if he never takes another professional at-bat. Such is the beauty of guaranteed contracts.

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But if your first instinct is to moan about overpaid athletes, please hold the bitterness and hear me out.

Eric Byrnes gets it. Really, really gets it.

He fits two criteria that matter most to fans: When he played, he played hard. And now that he’s done, he fully realizes how lucky he is.

During a telephone interview on Tuesday night, I asked Byrnes what he planned to do today. This is what he said:

… Surf. (I’m told the waves have been good lately.)

… Play 18 holes.

… Pull on the uniform of the Dutch Goose and represent the venerable Menlo Park burger-and-beer joint in a slowpitch softball league.

… Read his daughter a bedtime story.

When Byrnes says that he’s “really excited for life after baseball,” this is what he means.

“I was never afraid for it to be over,” he said. And it sure sounds like he means it.

Good for him. If you had a nice house in Half Moon Bay, Calif., and more money than you could spend, your Wednesday would sound a lot like that, too.

So this is how Eric Byrnes can be an everyman, even as a 34-year-old retiree. There is serenity in his voice, because he gave what he had to the game without confusing batting average for self-worth. Now he figures that it’s time to enjoy himself.

What a novel concept.

“I always looked forward to the day it was done,” he said. “Not because I didn’t enjoy the game. Not because I didn’t love the game. But through all of these years, my motto was the opposite of, ‘Baseball is Life.’ It’s not, for me.

Byrnes' best seasons came with the Diamondbacks in 2006 and 2007.
Ezra Shaw

“I don’t want to make it sound like I’m unappreciative of the game. It gave me a lot of what I have, especially financially. I’m in a position where I retired before both my parents. I’m very grateful for that.

“Am I retired from baseball? Yes. Am I retired from life? Not even close.”

So, what will he do with his time?

Let’s start with softball. It’s too irresistible to begin elsewhere. Since Byrnes grew up in nearby Woodside, Calif., he is now playing with the same friends he met on local Little League fields in the 1980s.

As with the Mariners, Byrnes is not an everyday man for the Dutch Goose. Key difference: The Goose doesn’t play every day. In fact, tonight marks only Byrnes’ second appearance since his release/retirement on May 2.

Byrnes has a surprisingly sharp recollection of last week’s debut.

“I played left-center field,” he noted with pride. “I probably made one of the better catches of my career. A sinking line drive. I believe the bases were loaded. Big situation. The ball ended up in shallow right-center field, but I caught it.

“I was going full speed. I did everything but the full layout.”

Byrnes had a decent day at the plate: 1-for-3 with an RBI single. He was intentionally walked, too, which sounds like a horrible breach of beer-league etiquette.

But Byrnes is even more miffed about his second at-bat. He smacked a line drive to center – “a bullet,” he said – only to see a defender jump, knock it out of the air, and corral it, defensive-back style, in front of the wall.

The worst part?

“The center fielder was the shortstop on my Little League team,” he said. “I kind of came to the dugout complaining, ‘Hey, that’s how my season’s gone so far.’”

But the news wasn’t all bad.

“We won – I think 15-14 or 16-15,” Byrnes said. “The greatest part, man: Where do you think we went afterward?”

We can only guess.

“Win or lose,” Byrnes said, “the burgers taste good, and the beer is always cold at the Goose.”

This much is certain: Byrnes had much more fun last Wednesday than his former team, which was then fully immersed in the latest Milton Bradley fiasco. Now, the Mariners are facing two weighty questions about icon Ken Griffey Jr.: Was he asleep in the clubhouse during a recent game? And can he still hit?

Byrnes may be enjoying his distance from such worries, but he can’t claim that his current place was part of The Plan, when first conceived.

He signed a three-year, $30 million extension with the Diamondbacks during a career year in 2007. He was supposed to be a franchise cornerstone. Then the injuries started and the hits stopped. The deal won’t expire until the end of this season. And the Diamondbacks, not the Dutch Goose, are paying him.

Since the contract went into effect, Byrnes batted .210.

“The past couple years, to be quite honest, baseball wasn’t a lot of fun,” he said.

Now, it appears that his lone connection to the majors will be through television work. He’s a natural on camera but doesn’t want a fulltime gig – yet.

You’re surprised?

“It’s about enjoying my life,” Byrnes said. “It’s about being able to get up in the morning and be there with my wife – she’s eight months pregnant – and our little girl.

“I decided a long time ago that I wasn’t going to let baseball define who I am as a person. At the end of the day, I am who I am.”

So, he’s going to surf, golf, play rec softball and enjoy a postgame drink with his buddies. It sounds like a beer commercial. Instead, it’s Eric Byrnes’ new life. Excuse him while he enjoys the hell out of it.

Eric Byrnes turns the page

Scott Ostler

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle

Eric Byrnes hits his second home run of his first softball game. "I'm beyond OK" with retirement from baseball, he said.

Eric Byrnes is back in the lineup as an everyday player. Every Wednesday, anyway. Byrnes is the starting left fielder for the Dutch Goose, a slow-pitch softball team sponsored by a Menlo Park burger barn.

Byrnes is probably the best-compensated ballplayer in the league, considering he will be paid $11 million this season - although the Arizona Diamondbacks ($10.6 million) and Seattle Mariners ($400,000) will pay his salary, while the Dutch Goose will simply supply the burgers and beer.

Until a week and a half ago, Byrnes was a Seattle Mariner, so some might see this as a step down. To Byrnes it's just another exciting chapter of life.

Wednesday night, in the Menlo Park League, Byrnes, the cleanup hitter, led off the bottom of the second inning against Vintage Construction.

The Vintage pitcher was Bill Lopez, who, as a local Little League coach, passed over 9-year-old Eric Byrnes in a draft.

Revenge time, 25 years later: Byrnes hit the first pitch deep over the left-field fence. When he arrived back at the dugout, Lopez nodded and rolled the ball to Byrnes, a souvenir of his first slow-pitch homer.

Byrnes walked to the stands and presented the ball to his proud mom, Judy.

Life is good.

It was a relief to see Byrnes seemingly happy and reasonably sane. The reports out of Seattle on his release by the Mariners were weird and disturbing.

The cut was no surprise. Byrnes, 34, had been battling injuries, was cut in January by the Diamondbacks, was picked up on the cheap by the Mariners, was relegated to part-time duty and wasn't hitting his pet bulldog's weight.

Two Fridays ago, in extra innings of a scoreless game in Seattle, Byrnes pulled his bat back on a suicide squeeze, rendering teammate Ichiro Suzuki a dead duck at the plate. The Mariners lost 2-0.

Minutes after the game, Byrnes burst out of the clubhouse riding a beach-cruiser bicycle, blew past the media and almost ran down Mariners general manager Jack Zduriencik, hurrying to the clubhouse to address his sinking team.

Two days later, Byrnes was cut, and he announced in a radio interview he was done with baseball for good but would be playing slow-pitch softball.

Knowing it's time to go

Those of us who met Byrnes when he played for the A's remember the Bay Area homeboy (St. Francis High in Mountain View) as a relentless free spirit and nonstop good guy. But the reports made it sound as if one of Byrnesy's notoriously loose screws had jammed and sent him spinning out of control.

To the above reports, Byrnes pleads guilty, with an explanation. He hadn't snapped; he merely flamed out, and retired from baseball with as much dignity as you can muster making your exit on a beach cruiser.

Byrnes said that when Mariners manager Don Wakamatsu and Zduriencik cut him, they offered to make calls to other teams on his behalf.

"I told him, 'I appreciate it, Jack, but this is it. I'm done,' " Byrnes said. "I went to shake Don's hand and he pushed it away and hugged me. He said, 'Hey, I never had anyone play harder for me.'

"To be honest, I don't really have any interest (in trying to play more baseball). I've never been scared for it to be done, for life after baseball, and it's not because I didn't love the game."

'I didn't give up on baseball'

One could make the case that few players ever enjoyed the game more. Romping in the outfield in batting practice, Byrnes looked like a large Labrador puppy.

Baseball guys always talk about the importance of never getting too high or too low, but Byrnes missed that memo. He arrived at the park (naturally) high every night, and went up from there.

Byrnes' version of events in Seattle vary from the news reports. On the failed squeeze bunt, he said the pitch was so far outside he said he knew he couldn't reach it, so he pulled back and hoped to obstruct the catcher to allow Ichiro to score.

After the game, he was upset with himself, so after showering he hopped on his bike (he lived near the ballpark) and pedaled off, not deliberately blowing off the media and not seeing the GM.

Byrnes said he left baseball, and the Mariners, on good terms.

"Ask any of my teammates if I gave a" darn, he said. "Ask Wakamatsu. Ask Mike Sweeney. ... I didn't give up on baseball. I played, in my mind, to the end. My time just ran out. ... I busted my ass for 11 years, I gave this game all I had."

He drove home from Seattle to Half Moon Bay with his 8-months-pregnant wife, Tarah; their 17-month-old daughter, Peanut (real name Chloe), and their three bulldogs. Byrnes slept a couple of hours at home, then hit the golf course.

Tuesday he played golf, then went surfing. Wednesday, softball.

"People keep asking me, 'Are you really done' " with baseball? Byrnes said. "I'm beyond OK with (retirement). This is awesome for me."

Second time up Wednesday, two men on. Home run, left field. Final: Goose 6, Vintage 2. Break up the Goose.

Lunch with the FT: Chad Hurley

By Richard Waters

Published: June 25 2010 16:35 | Last updated: June 25 2010 16:35

Passing from the midday California sunshine into the gloomy cavern of the Dutch Goose burger bar in Menlo Park, it’s easy to miss Chad Hurley at first. It’s not just a question of getting used to the light. Tall and lank-haired, wearing jeans and an untucked grey shirt, the 34-year-old lurking by the pool table blends right in. Standing beneath a screen showing the latest World Cup game, he gives a small self-conscious wave to draw attention to himself – not the sort of gesture you might expect from one of the fathers of YouTube, and Silicon Valley’s version of a rock star.

But the Dutch Goose offers a touch of blue collar in the midst of almost unimaginable wealth. And, though Menlo Park, wedged into the peninsula below San Francisco, is home to the investment bankers and venture capitalists who supply the cash that keep the wheels of US technological innovation turning, ostentation is out in these parts.

So I am not that surprised when the man who last year offered single-handedly to bankroll a new US team for Formula One suggests meeting at a place which, from the outside, looks like a concrete bunker. Hurley, a cross-country runner at school, still has the all-American male taste for sports – football and fast cars in particular – with the difference that his personal wealth means that he can indulge these tastes in a way that others can only dream of. The Dutch Goose is also, he explains, a favourite with his seven-year-old son and five-year-old daughter.

We make our way to the counter to order: a cheeseburger and french fries for Hurley, a Polish sausage (no fries) and a couple of sodas – and then look round for somewhere to sit. For a moment it seems as though we’re going to have to share one of the long bare wood tables with other diners. Then we spot a cubicle in a back corner that is almost entirely closed off from the room, as if staged for the purpose. Names scratched into the brown paintwork make it feel like a well-worn bus shelter. A dark shade with a bare bulb is hanging low.  

Lunch in Silicon Valley can follow a familiar formula, in which an entrepreneur will sketch out a version of the future in which his technology will have assumed some central significance. But when Hurley tries to express his vision, it’s almost as if he is trying on an unfamiliar set of clothes. Co-founder of the world’s third-most visited website (after Google and Facebook), he knows they should fit him but he’s not entirely comfortable in them.

Launched just five years ago, YouTube dominates internet video. Its dancing babies, amateur lip-synchs and other home-made videos and film clips have seeped into the consciousness of a generation. Yet when Hurley talks about this achievement, his language is curiously muted.

“We wanted to create a platform for every­one, a level playing field. We wanted to democratise the video experience,” he says. Or, more opaquely, “My vision for the future is, it’s all video, no matter where it’s consumed.” His voice sounds flat – certainly not un-genuine but lacking the messianic fervour exhibited by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook or Sergey Brin and Larry Page, founders of Google, as they talk about their creations.

But as we wait for our order Hurley begins to warm up. He is most engaged, almost passionate, describing the technical and design choices that went into YouTube – a site he and his friends Steve Chan and Jawed Karim created for themselves, not for the world at large.

Web design is what has made Hurley’s fortune, and accounts for his somewhat unusual status in the Valley. Engineers, typically, hold sway here, along with a class of MBA-wielding business managers who are generally looked down on, though most are too polite to mention that in public. Designers, with the rule-proving exception of Jonathan Ive at Apple, and marketing experts cling to the fringes.

Hurley is familiar with walking the fine line between design and science. As a child growing up in the small town of Birdsboro in Pennsylvania, he explains, he developed an early feel for both. “As long as I can remember I was drawing, or trying to create something,” he says, describing how at high school he moved easily between design and electronics classes. “I was one of those kids who took apart their toys to see how they work, just to see what they were made up of.”

Given the numbers of equally sharp people who have not enjoyed similar big breaks in Silicon Valley, it’s tempting to see anyone who has made it as lucky. It is harder, though, to account for repeat success. Hurley was hired straight out of college – Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where he studied computer science before switching track to major in fine art – as the 10th employee of a California-based online payments start-up called PayPal. He was, he says, the first recruit not known personally to the founders. Recruiting a full-time designer to create a logo and work on its website was also a rare choice for an internet company at such an early stage. Barely three years later, PayPal had been sold to eBay for $1.5bn and Hurley was out, with money in the bank and time on his hands.

It could also be ascribed to luck that his first personal attempt at a start-up turned out to be an even more dizzying – and speedy – success. YouTube was acquired for $1.65bn by Google just 18 months after its launch, with Hurley and Chen kept on to run it jointly as a semi-autonomous division of Google. (Karim went on to pursue a post-graduate degree in computer science.)

Chen has since moved on to other work within Google. Hurley, still officially at the helm of YouTube, which continues to operate semi-independently from its own offices in San Bruno, 25 miles from the Googleplex, has been joined by Salar Kamangar, a Google executive who has assumed much of the management responsibility for YouTube. Kamangar is “someone I had been recruiting for a long time to come on board”, Hurley says pointedly, adding: “He helps to deal with a lot of politics for me, he goes down to [Google HQ] and straightens things out.”

It is not, however, talk of his work at YouTube that prompts Hurley’s greatest animation. Before starting YouTube, he reveals, he worked on designs for wallets and other leather goods, and that interest has since expanded to clothing and taken the form of a company, Hlaska, with three stores and a website.

“There’s something very satisfying about creating a tactile product,” he enthuses as he shows off the Hlaska shirt he’s wearing, hinting that the company could one day take up more of his life: “It’s a little product that’s keeping me busy – maybe more in the future.”

He is similarly hopeful about other business ventures beyond the internet. Though football, in particular the Philadelphia Eagles, who he has supported since childhood, holds the strongest draw (“I’m an NFL guy”), Hurley says his hunt for personal involvement has taken him into fields where the commercial potential is still less developed.

Last year’s bid to create a US team for Formula One unravelled after sponsors failed to materialise; the car Hurley had dreamt of could not be built. However, says Hurley, part of F1’s appeal to him is the sport’s lack of a following in the US. The venture, the brainchild of Ken Anderson, a US motor sports engineer, and Peter Windsor, a former sports journalist, had something that grabbed Hurley by the gut: the risk – and potential rewards – of a start-up. “I love fast cars,” he adds slightly unnecessarily. When I ask if his own car – a Mercedes SL – goes fast, he smiles wryly: “It can do.”

 “I was willing to bet on a horse, but they didn’t even have a horse,” he muses. When I ask about speculation that he is seeking a partnership with Ferrari to bring a Formula One team to the US he does nothing to dampen the speculation, instead going out of his way to praise Ferrari’s role in the history of motor sports. “They’d be great to work with but I don’t know when that would be, whether it will even be an option on the table,” he says.

Though we have been talking for almost an hour, we have not been served with our order and neither of us – whether through tact or absorption in the discussion – has mentioned the fact. When, finally, I hear my name being called out to collect our food, I suspect I may have missed the call several times already. And, on the way to the counter to pick up our order, I worry about whether it’s been sitting under a heat lamp all this time. But, if that’s the case, the experience doesn’t seem visibly to have harmed our burger and sausage – which I carry back to the table.

After the long wait, the food comes as a relief. My bun filled with sweet and spicy polish sausage with mustard quickly overwhelms the tastebuds. It’s the kind of food to down fast, even if you haven’t waited this long. Hurley’s cheeseburger disappears without comment.

The bar’s videogames – a short row of retro arcade-style machines in a back corner – are, continues Hurley, a particular attraction for his children. It is, I say, a relief in the home of the techno-elite to hear that kids are brought up much as they are anywhere. There is no overly sophisticated parental control in the Hurley household: it’s just a case of letting them get on with it. “We don’t try to lock them up – one day they’re going to have to grow up and act on their own.”

This generation of children, says Hurley, will not be like those who grew up with the internet and “kind of got caught out”, exposing too much of their personal lives online. And parents, too, have also learnt enough about the technology to keep half an eye on their children’s behaviour. It sounds like the same pragmatic, hope-for-the-best attitude of parents the world over.

Given the impact of YouTube on the world’s youth, I ask about what sort of use Hurley’s own children might make of the site – have they, for instance, posted any videos of their own? It’s a question that elicits an uncharacteristically immediate and visceral response.

“It’s the thing about privacy,” he says, recoiling. “There are public things and private things, there are things in life you need to choose to be private. It was a decision very early on for me.” Though he quickly moves on to what sounds like a company line about how he and his co-founders decided not to post personal videos “so the discussion could be about the community, and what the community’s sharing”, there is no disguising the strength of his reaction.

Sensing from Hurley’s body language that the lunch is coming to an end, I ask him whether he thinks YouTube was sold too soon. Given everything that has happened since the sale to Google – including the emergence of Facebook, and the seemingly inexorable rise of internet valuations – isn’t it possible that he could have been owner of a company worth $20bn or more?

He takes the question without missing a beat: it’s clearly an answer he’s rehearsed many times. Taking the money that was on the table at the time and ensuring YouTube’s future under Google’s protective wing was the right thing both for investors and “the community”, he says. With both traditional media and internet companies wary of its rise, YouTube was vulnerable. “No one was really our friend – both sides were trash-talking us, what we are, what we were doing,” he says. “We knew if we’d gone out there and raised a large amount of money [to stay independent] it would have just put a bigger target on our back.”

Hurley’s praise for and admiration of Google seem genuine but it’s hard not to see his position within the company as something of an uncomfortable compromise. I remind him of a conversation we had four years ago, shortly before Google came knocking, when he and Chen argued that “pre-rolls” – advertisements shown before video clips can play – turn users away and were the last thing they would resort to. Pre-rolls are, however, now a key part of Google’s strategy for YouTube as it attempts to bring to an end its years of losses. “It’s a necessary evil,” Hurley concedes, adding that there are plans for other ways of making money from the site that will eventually give more control back to users again.

So is he at Google for the long haul? “It depends,” is the decidedly non-committal answer. “I’ve definitely stayed a lot longer than I would ever have expected, and probably a lot longer than anyone else would have expected.”

The young internet veteran says he carries a sketchbook around with him to jot down ideas, and talks wistfully of creating something new again. “I have ideas in my head I’d love to work on in the future,” he says. “It’s about creating, and having fun, and helping people.” As an ambition it might sound rather Miss-Worldish but the motivation is clearly from the heart.

Richard Waters is west coast editor of the FT