FJM'd: Don Norcross and his subject, Padres GM Josh Byrnes

Sometimes the subject of an interview has many stupid things to say. If every stupid thing the subject says is included in the final column or the writer fails to frame it ever so precisely, unintended and overwhelming folly ensues. For both writer and subject.

I give you new Padres GM Josh Byrnes as reported so terribly by the Union Tribune's Don Norcross....


The plane carrying the victorious, bleary-eyed Boston Red Sox from St. Louis landed in Beantown at about sunrise. The Curse of the Bambino had been exorcised, the 2004 Red Sox sweeping the Cardinals in baseball’s 100th World Series, 86 years of heartache laid to rest.

Just when people were beginning to believe that Jalalabad, Afghanistan was San Diego's Sister city Don Norcross steps in to set things straight with the Boston, Massachusetts reference. I think the point would have been stronger had he mentioned Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, Adrian Gonzalez, Theo Epstein, and Jed Hoyer.

Boston was yawning, still wiping sleep from its eyes as buses transporting the Red Sox to Fenway Park swept through downtown. But when the a.m. types realized the buses’ occupants, they celebrated.

New York is the town that never sleeps. Boston is the city that yawns. Tell me more...

Fans unfurled morning newspapers, shaking them at their heroes. Construction workers standing atop scaffolding jumped up and down.

With dwindling circulation, Don Norcross plants the seeds that will turn the UT back into a cash cow. I can't stand feeling inferior to Boston. I can read. I can unfurl a newspaper! Give me more UT. Don Norcross is a genius!

Wait . . . what is this article about?

Byrnes smiles and says, “It’d be pretty nice to bring that first World Series championship to San Diego.” 

Oh, hey! Josh Byrnes! New Padres GM! I thought this was the UT's travel section.

 In Hoyer’s place as general manager arrives Byrnes, at 41 only four years older than Hoyer, but, his perpetual smile aside, seemingly more hardened. Termination will do that. Only 18 months ago, Byrnes was pink-slipped as Arizona’s GM with five years remaining on his contract. 

An excellent job creating empathy for the new guy in town. If I signed an 8 year contract and got to sit around doing nothing while collecting the remaining 5 years I would be hardened too. Harder than a motherf*&ker!

“He was hurt, no doubt,” says Byrnes’ wife, Charity, a Mt. Carmel High graduate. “To be in this business, it’s not just a job. It sort of overcomes you and your family. He gave his heart and soul. It was very painful. To be honest, it’s not gone.

Oh lord. You included a quote from his wife, Don? She sounds like my mom after I got snubbed for All-Stars when I was 12 . . . which incidentally, was a travesty.

Moms and wives only discredit arguments, Don. They're too emotional. Charity from Mt. Carmel has discredited her husband and our GM before he's even started his first season. Way to emasculate the guy, Charity... AND Don!

“He’s moved on, but at the same time, it’s not like he roots for Arizona. Even if we were in the AL Central, he wouldn’t root for them, let alone being in the same division.”

Great. Now you're letting his wife pick a fight with Arizona? Wait. Perhaps I can get behind that sort of childlike pettiness.

So who is Josh Byrnes, the Padres’ ninth general manager as the club approaches its 44th season?

Oh, finally...

He was raised in Washington, D.C., by a single mother whom he unabashedly admits is the most influential person in his life. Sue Byrnes worked in government relations for a New York public relations firm, making the rounds in Congress.

So he's a momma's boy?

She stood on the National Mall for Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech. She worked for Bobby Kennedy and met JFK when he was president.

What does this have to do with the Padres new GM? And you're doing his poor single mother no favors by putting her name in the same circles as Jack and Bobby Kennedy.

“With my mouth wide open,” she says. “I couldn’t say anything.”

Couldn't say anything about what? About witnessing MLK's historic speech or meeting JFK?

If you're leaving me to guess then  I'm going to go with the time Josh ate his poo after it squirted out of his diaper as he ate butternut squash in his high-chair during his 18th month of life.

She volunteers for President Obama.

Now it all makes sense. This is a political piece. Mother Byrnes' socialist leanings have prepared Josh to run a franchise that requires dependence on revenue sharing from the well-to-do. This article is versatile. It could have been on the front page of the Union Tribune. Below the fold, of course.

Josh Byrnes attended private school with Jesse Jackson’s son, Yusef, and basketball star Grant Hill. Byrnes’ best friend since the age of 5 is African American.

I attended school with a star football player who robbed a doughnut store. It was not a private school. Josh Byrnes is better than my type. He's upper-crust. And now, like a proper leftist with DC beginnings, he's slumming it with a bottom feeder organization like the Padres.

Regarding his youth athletics, he says, “Often times, I was the minority on the field.”

The good readers of San Diego are questioning the inclusion of this quote by Norcross as irrelevant but I think they're missing the point. Josh Byrnes' has experience as a minority and it will be no different as an executive of a Major League Baseball franchise. Just look at the picture that accompanies this UT article. Things are never easy for guys who look like Josh Byrnes.

Speaking of youth athletics . . . I too was a minority on the field. I was one of the only ones who had the courage to attempt switch-hitting as a youngster. I looked like an athletic female. Like Jessica Biel.

On the subject of diversity, he adds, “People are different. We don’t all need to look alike and think alike.”
  
AJM Quick Poll:

More ridiculous? 
1.) Josh Byrnes' trite commentary.
2.) Don Norcross' inclusion of trite commentary.

“He was a Division I talent playing at a Division III school,” says Thad Levine, a Haverford teammate who worked with Byrnes at Colorado and is now the Texas Rangers’ assistant general manager.

Underachiever! He'll fit nicely within the San Diego sports scene.

Byrnes’ senior year, a scout checking out an Eastern University infielder asked Haverford’s coach if he had a prospect. The coach said to keep an eye on Byrnes. Byrnes hit a grand slam off the prospect, who also pitched.

So the prospect was being scouted as an infielder? But like most good athletes at small universities he also pitched? But he was being scouted as an infielder, not a pitcher? And Josh Byrnes hit a home run off the prospect . . . who was an infielder, not a pitcher?

And the fact that the scout overlooked him brought surprise to Josh Byrnes?

Recalls Byrnes, “I said, ‘OK, I’ve done about all I can do.’ The phone never rang.”

See previous commentary.

Life’s fork in the road came at a Haverford alumni baseball game. Haverford’s coach said Byrnes should spend some time with Ron Shapiro, a Haverford alum and baseball agent whose clientele included Cal Ripken Jr., Kirby Puckett and Eddie Murray.

You gotta know people in life, and Josh Byrnes seems to have been blessed by the contacts only one could make by attending a prestigious school like Harvard. I mean Haverford.

And so began Byrnes’ baseball escalator ride. From Indians intern in 1994 to director of scouting by 1999. From Rockies assistant GM in ’99 to Red Sox assistant GM in 2002. From Diamondbacks’ GM in 2005 to fired in 2010, now to Padres GM.

The Byrnes ascension through the ranks seems like a dream come true. Not something that would harden one to reality. Don Norcross disagrees. Because agreement would have required a rewrite. And he was at deadline.

Former co-workers rattle off common success traits when describing Byrnes: intellectual, disciplined, driven. There’s another quality that may set him apart — a willingness to think outside the box.

There's only one way to think when running a team like the Padres . . . and that's outside the box. What are we in store for? Left handed first basemen? Left handed catchers? Pitchers hitting 8th?!!

So the Rockies devised an “intern quiz” that would reveal if applicants were longtime baseball fans. Who was the player who famously put his arm around Jackie Robinson? (Pee Wee Reese.) Who hit the ball to center field when Willie Mays made his famous over-the-shoulder catch at the Polo Grounds? (Vic Wertz.)

An "intern quiz"? That's outside of the box? If an intern quiz is devised in such a way that I might get the job . . . there might be a problem. 

I like the Jackie Robinson/Pee Wee Reese diversity question though. It supports Josh Byrnes's assertion that his best friend, as a youth, was African-American.

At Cleveland, Byrnes supported the drafting of a player some deemed too big (CC Sabathia). At Boston, he endorsed selecting a player considered too small (Dustin Pedroia).

Josh Byrnes' belief in diversity is not limited to issues of race.

Look forward to drafts that include lumbering corner outfielders that defy the spaciousness of PETCO Park and pygmies out of Papua New Guinea to play the middle infield. Goodbye, Orlando Hudson!.

And at Arizona in 2009, he hired A.J. Hinch as manager even though Hinch had never coached or managed professionally.

Continuing with the theme of "looking forward" can I suggest a Managerial Triumvirate comprised of Mark Loretta, Trevor Hoffman and Chris Denorfia who will teach outfield dives?

“I was shocked,” admits Hinch.

I once hired an electrician to fix leaky plumbing in the kitchen. The leak was stemmed to a moderate drip which was an unforeseen surprise. The piping however, was now decorated like a Christmas Tree, which was freaking awesome!

I was shocked. Pleasantly.

Alas, if you dare to be great, sometimes you fall flat. The Diamondbacks posted an 89-123 record under Hinch. On July 1, 2010, Hinch and Byrnes were fired. 

Managers are only worth a few wins a year. This record speaks more to the team Byrnes assembled. And also how crappy AJ Hinch was a manager. I'm starting to write like Don Norcross. Forgive me.

Hinch is now a Padres assistant general manager.

Mediocrity must be rewarded. Very "outside the box".

Regarding the Hinch-as-manager experiment, Byrnes says, “We just never won enough. Anytime you have a controversial hire, you’re on a short leash. When we didn’t produce winning baseball, the natives got pretty restless.”

Natives in Arizona? Laughable!

Asked how the Padres can win with a modest payroll, Byrnes says, “I’m a big believer in belief. I think belief is a powerful thing.”

San Diego needs more believers in belief. If you believe hard enough it's good for at least one comma and three zeroes added to the bottom line. Believe it.

Like Hoyer, Byrnes believes there are no quick fixes and that the Padres must build in the same manner as the Tampa Bay Rays, via the draft.

If there was any doubt in Josh Byrnes and his belief in belief, Don Norcross erased it with this excerpt.

A Padres championship team, he says, must be built around pitching and defense. The team needs more dominant starting pitching. Position players, he says, must be built around speed, defense, quality at-bats “and a tenacious relentlessness about how they play.”

Tenacious relentlessness. It's like persistent single-mindedness. But with a teaspoon of stubborness.

He’s a Cameron Maybin believer and wants to sign the center fielder to a contract extension, although talks have not intensified.

If you believe, thy Cameron Maybin will extend.

If the man is worried, he conceals it well. Kevin Towers’ GM signature was his brashness, his most memorable line directed to the Dodgers — “There’s a new sheriff in town.”

I think the internet has covered this misstep ad nauseum. In Don Norcross' defense... Kevin Malone was pretty forgettable.

Byrnes’ handle, for now, is his smile. Not a goofy, happy-go-lucky grin. Just a content, life-is-good smile.

 Goofy, happy-go-lucky grin? Why does Heath Bell need to get a kick in the balls on the way out the door?

Sue Byrnes says her son has been that way since he slept in a crib. “He would wake up with a big smile on his face,” Sue says. “I called him Mr. Sunshine.”

Awwwww. Moms are the best.

****
 Don Norcross and Nick Canepa are making this off-season fun.