Please circulate this message freely!

Byrnesie gave a radio interview to the station at 910-AM in Phoenix Friday morning as he does each week. Yahoo Sports has published a report of that interview and our commenter, Holly, has sent me a link. Part of the article is as follows:

Outfielder Eric Byrnes admitted Friday “there is a good chance I am down for the year” with a torn left hamstring muscle, but he went on to say that he is keeping “a small window open.”

“The smartest thing would be to write off the season” and undergo surgery, Byrnes told a local radio station. “Right now, I’m not going to go with the surgery.”

Byrnes had a third MRI exam Thursday after the previous two showed what he called a 98 percent tear of the left hamstring. “I tore two-thirds of the hamstring off the bone” in a one-centimeter area,’ he said.

Surgery would require a six-month rehabilitation period, Byrnes said, but would ensure his availability for the start of the 200[9] season. Without surgery, he said he would need two months of inactivity before attempting to return. He has been out since July 1.

Byrnes, who signed a $30 million extension last season while becoming the 11th player in major league history with 20 home runs and 50 stolen bases in the same season, initially injured himself in a footrace with outfielder Chris Young on a back field the day before position players officially reported to spring training.

“If I could start this year over again, I would have never, never, never played in spring training,” Byrnes said.

“At that point, I should have said ‘that’s it’ and taken a couple of weeks off. It’s nobody’s fault but mine. I was never the same player from spring training on. If I had taken the right precautions at the beginning, I would be fine.”

I am hereby calling on all Eric Byrnes fans and fans of the Diamondbacks in general to join my campaign to convince Eric to stay down and have the surgery ASAP. Maybe if we are lucky, the front office will do the job for us, but I don’t know if they can order a player to have surgery if there is a more conservative medically reasonable option available. And on civil liberties grounds, I hope they cannot do more than persuade. But Byrnesie needs alot of persuasion and this is where you come in.

I am hoping that Byrnesie’s reluctance to undergo the knife is a kind of temporary, natural fear of such procedures that many people have, and that after a week of inactivity, a post-surgery rehab would start to look inviting. But I can sense in this article the possibility of a stubborn refusal to accept that we are all mortal and breakable, a kind of childlike sense of invulnerability, even in the face of vulnerability, that has him thinking he can come back in September. And that is dangerous. His career is on the line now.

You can see it in the fact that he admits that trying to play through the initial injury was a mistake, and that writing off this season is “the smartest thing” but that he is leaving “a small window open” to come back at the tail-end of this season. He’s a stubborn Aquarius and this interview suggests that he has not learned the lesson he should have from trying to play through the original injury.

I am his polar opposite, a stubborn Leo, and stubborn Leo says that if he has a medical option that will ensure his availability for the start of 2009, that is the course he should take. To rush his rehab and do without the surgery, even if Bob Melvin decides not to play him, is risking not only 2009, but his whole career. Just look at Moises Alou of the Mets. He keeps trying to come back from calf problems and keeps reinjuring himself. He can no longer be counted on and now in his 40’s, this may be his last year. Byrnes is almost 10 years younger than Alou; he’s got a lot of good years left IF he takes care of himself now.

So I am asking you all (especially you folks in the left field seats at Chase who wave the 22s) to write Eric and offer your words urging him to take the surgery, and the 6-month rehab, and be ready for 2009. You’ll know what to say. Perhaps you have had to endure a long rehab, but the results were great. Or perhaps you rushed a rehab with poor results. Or perhaps you can assure him that you will be ready to welcome him back in 2009. Or perhaps you can tell him that trying to comeback too soon is not real manhood. (He’ll hear that best from other men). Or that you won’t think of him as a coward or malingerer by his aiming for next year. If you are a health care professional, maybe you can tell him what you’ve seen in hospitals and physical therapy environments that could disspell whatever common fears he may have surrounding that type of surgery and rehab.

Write to Eric in care of the Arizona Diamondbacks

401 E. Jefferson Street

Phoenix, AZ 85004-2438

If you have or would like to have an account at the Livevideo web site where Byrnesie also has a channel, you can write to him there. I know for a fact that there is someone in his agent’s office who collects the mail sent to him there. Sign up for a free account at http://www.livevideo.com and from that account, send an email to EricByrnes (no space). You can also issue him a friendship invitation and once that is accepted, his messages about when he plans to show up online will turn up among your bulletins. Emphasis on the word “plans”. With variable quality Internet connections depending on where he is, The best laid plans of mice and men, etc. But then you can join his chatroom when he does show up.

You do not need your own webcam to have a channel or participate in the chatroom and there are some other very fine artists there whose work you might enjoy.

But whether you decide to write at the stadium or livevideo or you have your own connections to contact him some other way, please let him know that he has fan support for taking the longer but surer road back.

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