Eric Byrnes

Eric James Byrnes is an American baseball player who is also known as "Crash Test Dummy, Pigpen and Byrnesie". An outfielder for the Arizona Diamondbacks, Byrnes is an athletic player not afraid to get himself dirty in the outfield. His high school career was spent in the Western Catholic Athletic League, at St. Francis High School. He passed out in 1994 and was selected by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the MLB Draft.

Byrnes decided to forego the opportunity and go to college. At the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), he was 2nd in the batting order and played in right field. After his junior year, he was again picked in the MLB draft, but he decided to stick to his college instead of playing with the Astros in Houston. His .331 career and 75 doubles, the latter being a conference record, made him one of the most successful hitters in the history of Pac-10.

Graduating from UCLA in 1998, he was part of the MLB draft and this time, he was picked in the 8th round by the Oakland Athletics. In 2003, with the Athletics, Byrnes was involved in two incidents while running between bases. One was where he bumped into catcher, Jason Varitek of the Boston Red Sox, before Veritek had the ball. Byrnes hobbled back to the dugout after getting up, completely forgetting to touch the home-plate - Veritek tagged him out. The other mishap involved Red Sox player, Miguel Tejada, when he bumped into Byrnes at third base. Byrnes is one of the few players to have stolen 50 bases and scored 20 runs in one season, when he accomplished this in 2007.

During his career, he has played for the Oakland Athletics, the Colorado Rockies, the Baltimore Orioles and finally his current team, the Arizona Diamondbacks.