Eric Byrnes and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad At-Bat
Gregg Bell of the AP said we witnessed history tonight —- “You just saw the worst at-bat in the history of baseball.” He was referring to the at-bat in the bottom of the 11th where Eric Byrnes stepped to the plate with bases loaded and one out. He took a strike from reliever Frank Francisco. On the 0-1 pitch, manager Don Wakamatsu called for a suicide squeeze play. Ichiro Suzuki was on third, broke for home as Francisco began his delivery to home. Byrnes squared to bunt. Ready to bunt it fair for the game winning run. In a suicide squeeze situation, the hitter has just one rule - make contact with the ball, preferably on the ground. No matter where the pitch is, you must try and find a way to put the bat on the ball. If it’s too high, too low, or too anything, you try to just bunt it foul. But for some reason Byrnes inexplicably pulled the bat back on the low pitch from Francisco. At this point, there was nothing Ichiro could do. He’d already committed to going home. Catcher Matt Treanor picked up the ball off the ground and tagged Ichiro at home. On replays it looked as though Byrnes pulled the bat back and then remembered it was a squeeze and tried to set it back out there again.
… Obviously, we would have liked to talk to Byrnes about it. But as we waited to get into the clubhouse, he stormed out of the clubhouse, pushing his bicycle. He jumped on it and [rode] down the hall, past GM Jack Zduriencik, and apparently out of Safeco.
- Ryan Divish, News Tribune Mariners Insider
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