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2nd out of 17 books
—
15 voters
Odd Man Out: A Year on the Mound with a Minor League Misfit
A Season on the Mound with Minor League Baseball's Most Unlikely Pitcher
Matt McCarthy never expected to get drafted by a Major League Baseball team. A molecular biophysics major at Yale, he was a decent left-handed starter for a dismal college team. But good southpaws are hard to find, and when the Anaheim Angels selected him in the twenty-first round of the 2002 draft, Mc...more
Matt McCarthy never expected to get drafted by a Major League Baseball team. A molecular biophysics major at Yale, he was a decent left-handed starter for a dismal college team. But good southpaws are hard to find, and when the Anaheim Angels selected him in the twenty-first round of the 2002 draft, Mc...more
Hardcover, 295 pages
Published
February 19th 2009
by Viking Adult
(first published 2009)
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I find autobiographical sports stories very hit or miss for the most part, but McCarthy hits the mark perfectly in Odd Man Out.
Unlike many authors in this genre, McCarthy steers clear of both eye roll-inducing self-aggrandizement and dull statistically-driven ramblings.
His account of his brief time in minor league baseball paints a quirky, charming and realistic picture of what's it's like to play professional baseball at its lowest level. His witty, captivating account of his turn in the mino...more
Unlike many authors in this genre, McCarthy steers clear of both eye roll-inducing self-aggrandizement and dull statistically-driven ramblings.
His account of his brief time in minor league baseball paints a quirky, charming and realistic picture of what's it's like to play professional baseball at its lowest level. His witty, captivating account of his turn in the mino...more
I really enjoyed reading this book; it was well paced and the writing was very accessible, making it a quick and entertaining look at the entry point for aspiring MLB players. Picked it up on a whim and read it quickly, only to now learn that there's controversy over factual errors. Well, that dampens my enthusiasm somewhat, but doesn't surprise me, as some of McCarthy's stories and comments seem a bit over the top or inflamatory. Makes me want to ask Callaspo what he thinks of the book next tim...more
Found this on the new books shelf at the public library and decided it looked interesting without have heard anything about it. Since I "really like it" while I was reading it, I give it four stars. Now I read that there are many complaints from fellow players who alleged inaccuracies - enough so that an article appeared in the New York Times describing them (and the author's defense). If I had known about that before I read it, it would have been more difficult to enjoy. So I don't know that I...more
Like most of Matt McCarthy's teammates on the Provo Angels minor league team where he spent one season, I'm sick and tired of Ivy League bullshit.
A dude pitches on a losing team at Yale, gets drafted in like the 25th round and then writes a book about his one season playing minor league ball. What's remarkable about McCarthy's book is not the casual entrenched racism and homophobia that is middle America's stock in trade - because who is shocked that every asshole in this country hates fags and...more
A dude pitches on a losing team at Yale, gets drafted in like the 25th round and then writes a book about his one season playing minor league ball. What's remarkable about McCarthy's book is not the casual entrenched racism and homophobia that is middle America's stock in trade - because who is shocked that every asshole in this country hates fags and...more
(how often do you really use the "it was amazing!" rating?)
Baseball time so a baseball book and as far as baseball books go, this was a very good one. Matt McCarthy gives a very honest and transparent memoir of the life of a major league baseball player that we don't get to see. For all the glamor and glitz of the big leagues here is what goes on for years sometimes for those who have the dream of making it to the big club. McCarthy does an excellent job of retelling a year in the life of a mino...more
Baseball time so a baseball book and as far as baseball books go, this was a very good one. Matt McCarthy gives a very honest and transparent memoir of the life of a major league baseball player that we don't get to see. For all the glamor and glitz of the big leagues here is what goes on for years sometimes for those who have the dream of making it to the big club. McCarthy does an excellent job of retelling a year in the life of a mino...more
"Odd Man Out" makes clear the virtues associated with being good at two things.
Matt McCarthy's is an autobiographical account of a Yale grad with a scientific bent and the good fortune of being a southpaw.
The fact of his left-handed birth limited the competition for pitching slots nationwide. It paved the way for McCarthy to play at Yale and later be drafted by the Los Angeles Angels Baseball Club.
The dynamic here is simple and effective. A young and cerebral son of old Ivy is tossed into the...more
Matt McCarthy's is an autobiographical account of a Yale grad with a scientific bent and the good fortune of being a southpaw.
The fact of his left-handed birth limited the competition for pitching slots nationwide. It paved the way for McCarthy to play at Yale and later be drafted by the Los Angeles Angels Baseball Club.
The dynamic here is simple and effective. A young and cerebral son of old Ivy is tossed into the...more
Didn't like this book that much basically because except for maybe one character, who the reader doesn't meet until the end, you hate everyone. All the athletes are racist, homophopic and just plain dumb. This includes the writer. Well, maybe he's not dumb since he went to Yale, but you end up not liking him at all. For one, all the facts are wrong I guess, since there has been a lot of controversy around it. Also, he calls someone else a mole in the book, although HE'S DOING THE SAME EXACT THIN...more
This is an entertaining book that documents a year on the road with the Provo Angels minor league baseball team. It was written by Matt McCarthy who pitched for and graduated from Yale before he was drafted by the Angels in the 26th round, and then he spent one year playing for Provo before being cut the following year in spring training. McCarthy is a gifted writer which is not always the case for the pro athlete turned author.
Despite my compliments and high rating, I often felt uncomfortable...more
Despite my compliments and high rating, I often felt uncomfortable...more
I don't usually have three books on the go at once. But, I picked this up off a bargain book rack, started to read it in the doctor's waiting room, and can't seem to put it down.
An inside look at the life of a minor league baseball season, the author's one and only. Matt McCarthy was drafted in the 21st round by the Angels and assigned to their rookie league affiliate in Provo, Utah. Baseball is a tough business, ruled by the numbers, from your draft position, to your batting average or, if a pi...more
An inside look at the life of a minor league baseball season, the author's one and only. Matt McCarthy was drafted in the 21st round by the Angels and assigned to their rookie league affiliate in Provo, Utah. Baseball is a tough business, ruled by the numbers, from your draft position, to your batting average or, if a pi...more
I kind of loved this, really. It's close to a five star book, but for a bit of nagging distraction.
I am a fan of baseball, especially the local minor league team, the Durham Bulls. So I loved getting the perspective of a player going through a farm system. It's also well-written and perfectly paced. I was invested in the successes and failures of McCarthy and his team, the Provo Angels. Surprised at how grueling that schedule is and the toll it takes on a struggling player.
This insight is almost...more
I am a fan of baseball, especially the local minor league team, the Durham Bulls. So I loved getting the perspective of a player going through a farm system. It's also well-written and perfectly paced. I was invested in the successes and failures of McCarthy and his team, the Provo Angels. Surprised at how grueling that schedule is and the toll it takes on a struggling player.
This insight is almost...more
Entertaining very quick read (1 business trip). The book is about a guy who barely makes it into the minors, and spends one season with the single A team. It's reasonably well-written, and while the characters are not particularly well-developed, a couple of them are memorable. The interesting thing about the story is not the characters, or even the story itself (the team is reasonably successful, but there's hardly a climax), but the little observations, quirks, and light analysis of life as a...more
*sigh* Another mediocre minor league baseball memoir. I've gotta learn to stop reading these. The idea is fascinating — a Ball Four-style account of a year in the low minors from a Yale grad who, after he left baseball, ultimately went on to Harvard Medical School and a career as a physician (thereby validating the "misfit" claim of the title, given the anti-intellectual culture that seems largely endemic to a career in the game). But the execution is fairly flat... while McCarthy is a reasonabl...more
An interesting, but ultimately unsatisfying read. It is the story of a minor league pitcher who lasts just over one year in the minors. There are a lot of behind the scenes stories about the lives (on field and off) of the players on his minor league team. There was some controversy when then book came out about some of the stories in the book, but I don't know how anyone could be that shocked about the antics of young, uneducated, sexed- up young men living thousands of miles away from home in...more
Yale graduate Matt McCarthy is your guide to the minor leagues in this book that chronicles his year as a pitcher with the Angels organization, playing in Provo, Utah.
The schedule is alternately grueling and mind-numbingly boring. Coaching styles careen between gentle paternalism and obscenity-spewing mania. Players are foul-mouthed, hormonally overcharged and undereducated teenagers, and a racial divide splits the team down the middle. Camaraderie and professionalism are in short supply. "Nothi...more
The schedule is alternately grueling and mind-numbingly boring. Coaching styles careen between gentle paternalism and obscenity-spewing mania. Players are foul-mouthed, hormonally overcharged and undereducated teenagers, and a racial divide splits the team down the middle. Camaraderie and professionalism are in short supply. "Nothi...more
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...more
An interesting account of a year in the life of a minor league baseball player, Matt McCarthy, who is currently a medical student. Interesting because McCarthy writes about stuff that we fans probably have always suspected but never get proof of. Such as the fact that players almost never venture out of groups of their own racial background, and that there is almost zero communication between Americans and so-called "Dominicans" (a catch-all term for Latino ballplayers).
However, there are many...more
However, there are many...more
Nice insight into what it was like in minor league ball during the steroid era. McCarthy hasn't written a masterpiece, but it is rife with memorable characters and funny situations...especially given that it basically follows a bunch of hard-charging ballplayers in Provo, Utah (of all places). Hilarity ensues.
As with any memoir or autobiography, I always find it a little more truthful if the author makes him or herself seem like a jerk or at least a real person. And McCarthy does just that, show...more
As with any memoir or autobiography, I always find it a little more truthful if the author makes him or herself seem like a jerk or at least a real person. And McCarthy does just that, show...more
I poured through it in two nights. It was a little slow at the end, but overall, a good read.
You can't help but walk away from this book without some kind of opinion of the author and the behind-the-scenes antics of minor/major league baseball. My opinion... The author flaked out too often when conflict was presented and tried too hard to blend-in instead of being a leader in the clubhouse. Despite his shortcomings on and off the field, I can believe every incident (despite the desrepancies in b...more
You can't help but walk away from this book without some kind of opinion of the author and the behind-the-scenes antics of minor/major league baseball. My opinion... The author flaked out too often when conflict was presented and tried too hard to blend-in instead of being a leader in the clubhouse. Despite his shortcomings on and off the field, I can believe every incident (despite the desrepancies in b...more
This is one of the best baseball books I have read in some time. An irreverant, unromantic, and--I believe--realistic account of experience at the low minor league, it is throughly enjoyable. The author, now a physician, tells about an eclectic collection of characters largely interested in chasing girls and drinking beer but, as memebers of the Provo Angels, isolated deep in Mormon country, much to their frustration. The pressures of daily baseball, long bus rides, often poor facilities, and th...more
I enjoyed this vignette of the minor league experiences of a Yale graduate. McCarthy's style is pedestrian (not meant as a cut) and allows the casual reader to get sucked into the life of an aspiring major league baseball player. At first, I had a difficult time "reading" into the author's descriptions of his own actions and dialogue with others...was he playing with others, keeping his own views private while secretly expressing amusement at others' naivete or different world views from his own...more
This one leapt out at me...but didn't really deliver. It's an entertaining read, and it was perfect for the bout of insomnia that struck me last night, but to compare it to Ball Four, as did a couple of blurbs that sold me, is not doing a justice to Ball Four.
It's less like a book and more like a funny magazine article...I like the processes and idiosyncracies described, but at the end of of the day there's not a lot of heart to the whole work. Which is maybe indicative of the minor league baseb...more
It's less like a book and more like a funny magazine article...I like the processes and idiosyncracies described, but at the end of of the day there's not a lot of heart to the whole work. Which is maybe indicative of the minor league baseb...more
A year with the boys, and I think the phrase on the back jacket "hilariously grim" very nicely sums it up. McCarthy is drafted out of Yale by the Angels, and spends little over a year as a relief lefty in the extremely Mormon town of Provo, Utah. In so very many ways, it is an eye-opening experience in a manner that Yale could never be, but in the end, alas, he receives the pink slip he knew was coming all along, and resumes his former life as a Harvard med student.
By the way, if you watch any b...more
By the way, if you watch any b...more
As baseball season gets underway each year I like to read a baseball book to whet my appetite for the coming six months. I have read some real gems in the past, but I can't remember a book I enjoyed more than this one. I literally devoured it in just a few sittings. McCarthy is an excellent storyteller. Laugh out loud funny. Excellent character descriptions. A real ear for conversation. Compares favorably to The Bullpen Gospels by Dirk Hayhurst (another of my favorites).
Downgraded this book to...more
Downgraded this book to...more
Interesting story. Molecular biophysics major and decent left-handed pitcher from Yale, Matt McCarthy was drafted by the Anaheim Angels in the 26th round. He played with Anaheim's minor league affiliate in Provo, Utah. A satisfying telling of his year on the road with an assortment of both kind and cruel and misunderstood players and a coach who could be your best friend or just plain crazy. I have not read "Ball Four" but have heard it is another baseball book worth reading, and that when that...more
I was going to give this four stars as I enjoyed it quite a bit but then I looked up and read some stuff online about fabrications and falsehoods--kind of put a damper on the book. McCarthy writes about some wild antics in the locker room and based around his one year as a pitcher in a rookie league in Provo. Seems a lot of people claim things didn't happen the way McCarthy writes they did. It's his book, his memories but you expect to have a majority of truth in a memoir setting. Kind of puts a...more
Humorous at times, pompous at others. The know-it-all author narrates his way perfectly through every tough situation. There seemed to be a disconnect between the author and everyone else he encountered during his minor league baseball time. I guess this is because of the constant promoting, retiring and cutting of the players. It seems like he was as lackadaisical on the field as he was in the locker room, and it comes across in his writing, too.
I'd say the book is worth the read for the few in...more
I'd say the book is worth the read for the few in...more
Autobiographical account of Yale graduate and baseball player, Matt McCarthy, and his year in minor league baseball with the Angels organization. There are a lot of good things to be in this world, but a left-handed pitcher who can throw in the 90s is one of the best. Some dispute about the accuracy of this memoir, but I thoroughly enjoyed the stories of the life of a minor leaguer, especially in fish-out-of-water Utah. Interesting take on some of the natural divisions in baseball clubhouses, as...more
Matt McCarthy reminds me of Paul Shirley. Neither seems to realize how cocky they come off, and neither can write nearly as well as they think they can. The problem with being a semi-literate pro-athlete is that, relative to your peers, you seem like Shakespeare, but to the rest of us, you write as well as the average blogger.
Other notes:
Probably the only baseball book to begin a chapter with a "The Waste Land" reference.
The Bobby Jenks anecdotes are entertaining but not surprising.
I read this...more
Other notes:
Probably the only baseball book to begin a chapter with a "The Waste Land" reference.
The Bobby Jenks anecdotes are entertaining but not surprising.
I read this...more
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Matt McCarthy was an Ivy League pitcher on a losing Yale baseball team and a biophysics major (and probably the only minor leaguer doing genetic research during the off season) drafted in the 26th round by the Angels only because he was a left-handed pitcher (fastest way to the Show, as they say). The book chronicles his brief and harldly brilliant baseball career in the minors with the Provo Angels.
Growing up in a town with a minor league team (the Dunedin Blue Jays - who ate at the same hole-...more
Growing up in a town with a minor league team (the Dunedin Blue Jays - who ate at the same hole-...more
This is basically a modern version of Ball Four, but set in the low levels of the minor leagues. Ball Four was groundbreaking at the time it was written, but the stories and characters in it were pretty tame compared to the ones in this book.
I am a little conflicted about the author's use of the actual names of his teammates and coaches. On one hand, the stories were more entertaining when I recognized the names of its subjects. However, McCarthy had to betray a lot of trust from those teammates...more
I am a little conflicted about the author's use of the actual names of his teammates and coaches. On one hand, the stories were more entertaining when I recognized the names of its subjects. However, McCarthy had to betray a lot of trust from those teammates...more
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Mar 15, 2009 09:18am