Down the Left Field Line:
Life, Baseball & Eric Byrnes

Outfielder takes swings on field, to have MRI next week
By Steve Gilbert / MLB.com

SAN DIEGO — Eric Byrnes took batting practice on the field Tuesday for the first time since suffering a torn hamstring almost two months ago….

Byrnes said he will have an MRI taken next week to determine if his left hamstring has healed sufficiently [...]

I’m going to be off this blog for two weeks to do some work. Those of you who enjoy politics almost as much as you do baseball–nothing could be as fun as baseball, right?–can catch me and some of my colleagues blogging at Pacifica Radio’s unConventional Coverage website during both the Democratic and Republican conventions. [...]

Well, at least the Diamondbacks got Randy Johnson some runs this time. Two in the second inning, in fact. But by the fifth inning, the Fishies had tied it and when Johnson called it quits after 7 innings, 116 pitches, and 13 strikeouts–Florida’s a great team with which to pad one’s strikeout totals–he had given [...]

On this day in 2000, Eric Byrnes made his major league debut with the Oakland Athletics. He hit a single his first time up.
In a radio interview in Phoenix this morning, Byrnesie said that he was among 50 prospects who were brought together just after his first year in pro baseball. The coach addressing [...]

Brandon Webb won his 19th game of the year yesterday, as the Diamondbacks beat the Padres 4-1. He allowed only 3 hits in 7 shut out innings. He struck out 8 while walking three. The question now is not will Webb win 20, the gold standard of starters, but how many more than 20 he [...]

The Diamondbacks almost blew a 7-3 lead in the ninth inning last night against the Padres. Keyword: Almost. The final score was 7-6. But that was scary.
The Dodgers lost, so the D’backs are back to a game up in the NL Worst.
The Snakes are now 5 games over .500 (65-60). Their record would be [...]

The Diamondbacks scored a combined 23 runs in their first two games against the Houston Astros, but were shut out today. The final score was 3-0. The blanking left starter Randy Johnson still sitting on 294 victories.
A couple of starts ago, the Pittsburgh Pirates shut out the D’Backs when their starter took a perfect game [...]

…one by Miguel Montero and the other  by the Houston-born Chris Young, made it an easy outing for Yusmeiro Petit as the D’Backs again bit Houston in the Astro 11- 5. That’s 23 runs in 2 games, and no fun for the Astros and their fans on the day before they retired the great Craig [...]

won his 18th game of the year as the Diamondbacks shellacked the Astros 12-2 yesterday. Webby now has a chance to win 20 games by the end of August!
Houstonians Chris Snyder and Chris Young, and former Astro Chris Burke — you have a good chance of finding a place with the Diamondbacks if your name [...]

are cut to shoulder length. They no longer obscure his name on the back of his uniform. I think that’s reasonable. Now will the Dodgers organization, which allegedly has a hair policy, and Joe Torre, who is allegedly trying to enforcing it, kindly go back to the business of finding a way to lose the [...]