'Odd Man Out' author Matt McCarthy's accuracy is questioned

Matt McCarthy's professional baseball career flamed out after one season, 2002, with the Provo Angels in the lowly Pioneer League. He was quietly released the following spring. Now, McCarthy has published "Odd Man Out: A Year on the Mound with a Minor League Misfit," and the notoriety the memoir has generated ensures that he will be enshrined in baseball and publishing lore.

In this raucous and occasionally profane book, McCarthy chronicles the chilling racial division that Latino athletes face in the clubhouse, details conversations with teammates about sexual high jinks and taking steroids, and describes an object he calls the "Rally Penis" that his manager used to inspire his charges.

The backlash has been furious. Manager Tom Kotchman and many former teammates dispute the accuracy of McCarthy's account. "I've gone through it multiple times," Kotchman says. "In so many places it's just flat-out wrong or fabricated."

The book has also been put under the microscope by the New York Times, among other media outlets. Reporters Benjamin Hill and Alan Schwarz scoured old box scores and transaction listings and confirmed dozens of errors. "[M]any portions of the book are incorrect, embellished or impossible," they concluded.

McCarthy concedes that he made factual errors, but he stands by the book's veracity. "If you're somebody who needs your sports stories sugarcoated, don't read the book," he says. "But if you want to feel closer to the game, then that's what this is about."

Still to be determined is McCarthy's legacy. Will he be remembered as this generation's Jim Bouton and Pat Jordan, authors, respectively, of the baseball classics "Ball Four" and "A False Spring"? Or, is he the latest iteration of James Frey, author of the faux memoir "A Million Little Pieces"?

Now 28, McCarthy is a trim 6-footer with close-cropped brown hair. He wears a blue-and-white striped Oxford shirt and a harried expression as he perches on a couch in the lobby of the Beverly Hilton hotel.

The previous day, the bombshell article in the New York Times had appeared. The newspaper wasn't the first media outlet to weigh in; articles disputing elements of "Odd Man Out" have run in the Orange County Register, the Chicago Tribune and Stephen C. Smith's blog FutureAngels .com.

But the Times' thoroughness and harsh tone shook McCarthy, who says he offered the reporters a "point-by-point" rebuttal.