Description
Matt McCarthy always knew he was a pretty good pitcher. In high school, he played for one of the best teams in Florida, made All-State, and was offered a scholarship to play for the baseball team at Yale. After four years of playing college ball with a truly awful Yale baseball team, Matt was ready to pack it in and start his post-college life in the field of his studies: molecular biophysics and biochemistry. That all changed with one phone call informing Matt that he had been drafted by the Anaheim Angels. In this vivid, behind-the-scenes account, Odd Man Out: A Year on the Mound with a Minor League Misfit, Matt tells the story of his wild year playing in the Angels’ farm system. A tale of high jinks and lowlifes, competition and camaraderie, Odd Man Out is one of the great books about the baseball life, capturing with rare perfection the gritty essence of our national pastime as it is played outside the spotlight.
From the moment Matt arrived in Mesa, Arizona for spring training, it was apparent he wasn’t the usual minor-leaguer. Almost none of his teammates had been to college—many only teenagers plucked straight from high school or from the barrios of Latin America. Matt felt like a stranger in a strange land. It didn’t help that all of his teammates were looking out for number one, and that the American players and Hispanic players didn’t speak to each other. But soon enough he was right in the thick of things, surrounded by hard-partying guys trying to get him drunk, laid, and performance enhancing drugs, as he struggles to prove to himself and his coaches that he can cut it in the minors.
Odd Man Out gives a taste of what goes on in the dugout and the locker room at the rock bottom of professional baseball: 14-hour bus rides, trying to make ends meet on very meager pay, players willing to do anything to get a chance to move up to the majors. Matt never made it himself, but he got to play with some of the best players in the league, including future All-Stars Joe Saunders, Prince Fielder, Ervin Santana, and Bobby Jenks, all of whom are featured here when they were fresh-faced draftees, just starting out.
Most baseball coverage glitters with multi-million dollar contracts, national ad campaigns, and over-the-top lifestyles. Odd Man Out takes readers inside the no-frills reality of what it takes to compete in the madhouse that is the minor leagues—a realm filled with crazies, prima-donnas, stoners, unhinged managers, and 18-year old kids with more talent than one could possibly hope for, and everyone clinging to a glimmer of hope that the major leagues are still in reach.
