Burn, baby, burn: A's outfielder Eric Byrnes hopes his hot act--punctuated by speed and an all-out style--keeps him in the show. (Baseball).(Oakland A's)

The postgame spread had been laid out in a victorious A's clubhouse at Network Associates Coliseum when G.M. Billy Beane playfully picked on Eric Byrnes, the white-hot hitter who was then in the early stages of a career-best 22-game hitting streak. In the span of a few weeks, Byrnes had risen from a hustling fifth outfielder to cult hero. Beane figured it was time to tease him a bit.

From the clubhouse kitchen, Beane reminded Byrnes that the club still owned an option to send him back to Class AAA Sacramento without him having to clear waivers. Beane kidded that he had flexibility to make a roster move with Byrnes.

Byrnes grinned but wasn't totally amused.

"I immediately stepped in and told him that that's no joke," Byrnes says. "I've been up and down seven times, if not more. That's seven times in the manager's office hearing, 'All right, you're going back to Triple-A.' Needless to say, it got pretty repetitive."

The mercurial Byrnes, who takes his baseball very seriously, is tired of bouncing around like Tigger on a trampoline. After replacing injured Jermaine Dye on April 25, Byrnes has played his way into the everyday lineup, helped keep the A's in playoff contention and even revived disco, albeit at The Net. The Trammps' 1977 hit "Disco Inferno" blares when he approaches the plate at home.

"Is that the 'Burn, baby, burn' song?" Byrnes asks. "It never crossed my mind that this was a song that was going to be played when I came to bat. I never picked a song because I never played enough."

Though Byrnes, 27, always had speed to burn, the book on him said he wasn't fundamentally sound enough or disciplined enough to play every day at the big-league level. He was a specialist off the bench and no more.