MLB

Serby’s Sunday Q & A with… Marlon Byrd

Mets outfield Marlon Byrd, who is having a career year, took a swing at some Q&A with Post columnist Steve Serby.

Q: Do you like playing here?

A: It’s not easy to play in a large market. Some guys can do it, some guys can’t. It doesn’t bother me.

Q: You’ve taken the younger outfielders under your wing.

A: The first thing that I told them in spring training, I said, “You can come ask me anything. You want to ask about being designated, you want to ask about being released, you want to ask about being traded, you want to ask about being suspended …” I think I’ve covered every single one of them (laugh).

Q: Describe your leg injury at Georgia Tech.

A: We were trying to figure out what it was from — it could have been kicking the door, it could have been from kick boxing, could have been from anything. But the banging of my leg, my shin, that injury I had you see in soccer from banging of the legs or car accidents. Or it could have been just from over and over the banging, the use, of football when I was younger.

Q: How terrifying was your acute compartment syndrome in college?

A: I couldn’t sleep for maybe four days to a week. My leg was swelling, had a drop foot — which means you can’t move your foot, it’s just hanging. I didn’t know it was. I had a high tolerance for pain, but it got to the point where I couldn’t take the pain anymore. [I] called my parents, went to St. Joseph’s, had emergency surgery. The sad thing was I caught it too late, and about the time they went in the muscle was dead.

Q: Weren’t they actually talking about amputation?

A: Yes. Amputation was the first thought, ’cause they weren’t sure how bad the infection was. I was blessed because I had Dr. George Cierny, which is in my opinion, and other doctors’ opinions, one of the top specialists in the country, if not the world. He specializes in everything. He really used his mind and thought about it and was able to save my (right) leg.

Q: Do you remember him using the word amputation?

A: No, he told my parents that I was close. What it was told with me was when he finally collected his thoughts, got his team of doctors together, how he was gonna save the leg, the surgery that he was going to do, just to make sure that I could walk again. It was nothing to get back on the field. It was said to us that my career was over, but he was gonna make sure that I could be a normal human being and walk again.

Q: There were three surgeries over how long a period?

A: From Thanksgiving of ’96 all the way to January 31 of 1997.

Q: What was life like when you got home?

A: I went from being a student-athlete to just a student, so life was weird. Got a job, was working at Planet Smoothie.

Q: What did you do, make smoothies?

A: Yeah, made smoothies.

Q: What’d you get paid?

A: Maybe $5.25 an hour.

Q: Good smoothie maker?

A: Yeah I was very good — fast. Again, I think I was putting my athletic competition skills to use (smile), and trying to be the best that I could .

Q: Was it depressing? Was there a void in your life?

A: It wasn’t depressing, there wasn’t a void. I don’t know, it was kind of a relief at the time. I’d been playing sports since I was 5 years old, and now I was 19, going on 20, and felt like I had a break for the first time.

Q: Did you think your baseball career was over?

A: No, not at all.

Q: You didn’t believe the doctors then.

A: It wasn’t about believing the doctors, it was seeing what I could do after I got the cast off, after I started my rehab, after I started moving around to see where I was. I remember when I got the cast off and I got the little prosthetic to put in my foot to hold my foot up, and I remember the first day going out and try to play basketball, and how terrible I was. I couldn’t jump, I couldn’t move like I wanted to. My rehab, learning how to stand on one leg, balance, learn how to walk again, the underwater treadmill, all of that. It was a very, very slow process.

Q: When did you start thinking maybe you could play baseball again?

A: The summer of ’98. My weight had ballooned to 315 pounds, which I didn’t know, from 225 to 315. Maybe too many smoothies that I had on my own (smile). And then just having fun. I remember trying to go out and play with the East Cobb Summer League, and I wasn’t good at all. Had a hard time bending over to catch a ball, had a hard time catching, had a hard time doing everything that I was used to doing. … Could still hit a little bit … and I was having pain my leg. And I remember going to see Dr. Cierny to tell him about the pain in my leg, and he goes, “You’re too big. Drop the weight. You’ll be fine.”

Q: How did you lose the weight?

A: It was weird. It was before Jared did the Subway thing. I did the Subway diet before all of that was popular. I was eating chicken and rice and broccoli, I started reading muscle magazines. So I basically did a bodybuilder’s diet, but also do the Subway, the 6-inch and 6 grams of fat, whatever it was. I did that for five months straight, and dropped 90 pounds in five months. It turned into a fetish where I had to wake up at 1 in the morning, had to go do cardio. I hit the Stairmaster, and that was my thing, to work out, work out to get in shape. And it still wasn’t really more of playing baseball, it was getting my body in shape ’cause I started seeing the changes. But I always remember the first day getting on the treadmill (chuckle). And through five minutes of walking at 3 miles per hour, I was dead tired. And I busted through it. I did 15 minutes the first day, and I said, “I’m gonna add a minute a day.” And that’s what I did. My leg was working not like it used to, but it was working well enough to where I could stay play at the level that I wanted to play at, and that’s when I had my last year at junior college (Georgia Perimeter College). Had a great year and got drafted.

Q: How high is the ceiling for Matt Harvey?

A: Sky’s the limit. With health on his side, he can be one of the greatest of all time. You saw Nolan Ryan, you saw what he did, all the way up through his 40s — the seven no-hitters, the 3 trillion strikeouts that he had. … He stayed healthy. Roger Clemens — staying healthy.

Q: What do you think of the cloud over Alex Rodriguez?

A: I think the whole thing about the Biogenesis is, you have to let the facts come out. Until the facts come out, you really don’t know whether Alex was a part of it, whether he wasn’t. He’s come out and said that he wasn’t. Ryan Braun said that he wasn’t. I think Major League Baseball knows exactly what they need to do, if there’s evidence against them that they did take the stuff. What they’re gonna do, I’m not sure. It’s gonna be a fight for Alex, ’cause Major League Baseball believes one thing, because they’ve done their investigation, and Alex and Ryan, they know the truth. They know if they did or didn’t. … It’s just one of those things where when they say they didn’t, you just hope they’re telling the truth. That [is a] black cloud on baseball you don’t want.

Q: Describe your 50-game suspension last season for tamoxifen.

A: I don’t make any excuses. I took it. The drug testing works. I did not try to appeal, or anything. I took my suspension like a man, but at the same time, everything that happened with that, I embraced it all, and I used that time to get better as a person and as a player.

Q: MLB spoke to you about your relationship with Victor Conte in 2009.

A: They said that we don’t condone it, but it’s your decision. I use all of his supplements, I don’t push any of his supplements on anyone.

Q: Boyhood idol?

A: Dale Murphy.

Q: Three dinner guests?

A: Theodore Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr., George Washington.

Q: Favorite movie?

A: “The Three Amigos.”

Q: Favorite actor?

A: Denzel [Washington].

Q: Favorite singer?

A: Michael Jackson.