For 13 years Eric Byrnes's life was shaped by professional baseball. What to eat. When to report. How to handle failure. How to exercise. What to avoid. What to embrace. It had almost as many daily details attached to it as a presidential schedule.
And then, poof, it was gone. On May 2, 2010, the Seattle Mariners released Byrnes. Thank you for your service and there's the door to the rest of your life. His days were free of structure, and Byrnes embraced the openness of it.
"I surfed and played some golf and softball," Byrnes said. He saw moonrises and sunsets and all his friends said the same thing: Dude, chill, you got it all.
Live the casual life. That would be fine except Byrnes doesn't do casual very well.
Byrnes got the nickname "Crash Test Dummy" for his lack of fear chasing fly balls in the outfield in the 11 years he played for the A's, Rockies, Orioles, Diamondbacks and Mariners. He bounced off walls with reckless enthusiasm and the fans loved him for it.
"That's my nature," he said. "I'm either all in or I'm not."
The approach almost was a necessity. Diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder as a child, Byrnes immersed himself in the structure baseball demanded.
He loved baseball for that, it occupying his mind as well as his body. And surfing and golf and softball, well, all that was like playing bridge to Byrnes, almost sedentary if you can imagine.
"There was a missing component," he said.
In November 2010, seven months after he retired, Byrnes gave this mini-mini-triathlon in Pacific Grove a chance to satisfy his zest. It was a 500-yard swim, 12-mile bike and 2.3-mile run. The results were legend.
"I almost drowned in the water and had 16-year-old girls pass me on their bicycles," Byrnes said.
Now such an experience might discourage most people. Not the Crash Test Dummy. It intrigued him. To get where he wouldn't drown, to where he at least could keep up on a bicycle with 16-year-old girls, Byrnes did what Eric always does - he immersed himself in structure, the structure demanded of triathletes.
"All my friends told me I was crazy," Byrnes said. He told them he would be crazy not to do it. They snickered. A lot of people snickered. But not his dad, Jim. It was Jim who encouraged his son, who told him to go for it and never mind the detractors.
Byrnes hired a coach to train and Byrnes went for it as only a hell-bent-for-leather guy can do. Four months into training, in March 2011, Jim, 66, died unexpectedly from a heart procedure that went sideways.
Byrnes stood alone as the crossroads of Doubt and Indecision.
"I was out of baseball less than a year and my dad, the one person who really encouraged me, passed," said the Half Moon Bay resident. "What was I going to do?"
He used training as therapy, that's what he did.
When he was piling on those miles on a bike, Byrnes would be talking to his dad. About anything. Certainly about commitment. It was almost as if his father was his mantra, the meditation of the one-sided conversation settling him comfortably into the bicycle seat, into the pool and on the asphalt.
Byrnes did his first Ironman in Arizona in 2011, then his second Ironman in New York City in August 2012 and then a third last November. He is using Sunday's Vineman Monte Rio as a prep for his fourth Ironman, this September in Lake Tahoe. Once Byrnes weighed 220 pounds playing baseball. Now 37, the 6-foot-2 athlete weighs 187.
"I'm in the best condition of my life. It's not even close," Byrnes said. "I feel as quick and as agile as I ever have in my life."
Byrnes is a marvel and it's not because he played 11 years in the big leagues or that he dropped 33 pounds or even that he can keep up with teenagers on a bicycle. It's that he provides sports commentary five days a week on San Francisco's KNBR - except when it's three days a week because he's in New York working for MLB Network.
Oh, and he has three young children: Chloe, 4, Cali 3 and Colton 2.
And Byrnes says he doesn't feel stressed at all. He's not a man of many hats as much as he is a man of many arms and legs. Byrnes always has enjoyed being a participant in his life, not a spectator. With his quick mind, baseball knowledge and attention to detail Byrnes is constructed perfectly to be a manager.
"Never," he said. "A manager or a coach has to be all in, total 100 percent dedication, to live each and every day with the game. They work as hard if not harder than the players. My focus now is on my family."
His family is his planet. KNBR, MLB Network and triathlons are the moons circling his planet. It all makes sense to Byrnes and it does as well to anyone who has ever gotten to know him. It's almost as if he is a force of nature - his nature.
"I've been reading up on this race called the Western States 100," Byrnes said. "It intrigues me."
The Western States 100 is a real butt-kicker. It can grind a triathlete to dust. It can humble the most adventurous, the most confident. Do read more on it, Eric.
"Oh, I will," Byrnes said. "I will."
I could feel him smiling on the other end of the telephone.
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