rabck from bookstogive; the author spends a year in the minor leagues based in Provo Utah, but traveling by bus to games in various states and Canada. Very draining lifestyle. The games are usually afternoon/night, but then travel time, training time - and almost no free time. Paid a pittance, eating fast food mostly, and a pink slip could come at any time, because there's another replacement hungry to play baseball waiting in the wings. ( )

“There were a dozen Dominicans on our team, hailing from Venezuela, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Panama, and, yes, the Dominican Republic.”

Yep, ignorant racism in the locker room, and it runs through this book quite a bit. Lots of stereotypes and derogatory comments, but I will say that the thing that Aybar and Callaspo did with the hot dog buns...

That aside, I really liked this book! It seems so genuine and real, and I felt like I was right along with McCarthy on his year in single A. The story is post 9/11, pre-“Moneyball”, and right as the big league club is on their way to the World Series! There are so many good parts! The conversation about whether or not to use steroids is so insightful! And I loved, loved, loved Kotchman! AND his Rally Penis!!! Dude should have his own book! And poor Matt, a born-again virgin! Really? Come on!!!
If you like baseball, this is a really good read! I'm going to recommend it... a lot! ( )

Good book on the minor leagues ( )

Matt McCarthy's funny, revealing and moving memoir, ODD MAN OUT, is probably the best book about the lower levels of professional baseball since Pat Jordan's classic A FALSE SPRING (1975), which I read over 30 years ago.

McCarthy was indeed an oddity in professional ball, a Yale graduate who majored in molecular biophysics. Following him through his one and a half seasons as a left-handed pitcher with minor league farm teams (Provo and Rancho Cucamonga) of the Anaheim Angels is a real trip in more ways than one. You get a real sense of the grittiness of it all: near slave-wages, greasy fast food, sweaty bus journeys and crappy locker rooms that are all part of lowest levels of professional ball. McCarthy gets used to being treated with suspicion and distrust because of his education, but he makes a few friends along the way as he gradually begins to realize his "stuff" is probably never going to get him to the majors. A few of the odd players - and coaches - he meets made me also remember a great fictional account of such a bottom-feeder southern league team - Michael Bishop's BRITTLE INNINGS.

I liked Matt McCarthy's book a lot. He is a natural and skillful storyteller. Now a physician, McCarthy obviously has great memories of his days as a pro ball player, undistinguished as they may have been. I don't know know what kind of a doctor McCarthy is or will turn out to be, but he's a damn good writer. The last paragraph in the book's Epilogue actually gave me goose bumps. It was that moving. I mean shades of BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY, another favorite baseball book by Mark Harris. I will recommend ODD MAN OUT to anyone who loves baseball and good books. ( )

There's a lot of criticism of this book for time/place/statistical mistakes -- most of which read something like "McCarthy describes this happening on July 15 but so-and-so didn't join the team until July 30." To place this criticism in the context of the book, first of all, I don't think the author makes a single reference to a specific date of a game in the whole book -- so fact checkers FIRST have to figure out what date McCarthy is IMPLYING something occurred and THEN they can tell us all it didn't happen that day. Ugh. Who cares.I think most readers of minor league stories are interested in the atmosphere and experience of that time -- and this book is a plausibly real memoir of that. Sure, McCarthy's not a star, wasn't really expected to be a star, and so his story lacks celebrity glitz. This book is NOT an expose or even much of a paparazzi-esque candid look at future big-leaguers -- in retrospect, it is an easy and fast read, light on plot, and nothing really revelatory/super-insightful. But for armchair baseball, it works for me. ( )