Another Invented Tale?

NYT Unloads on Discrepancies in Minor-League Baseball Memoir

Matt McCarthy's recently-published ODD MAN OUT, his "salacious memoir of his summer as an obscure minor league pitcher," is full of "wide-ranging errors and misquotations" according to the NYT. "Statistics from that season, transaction listings and interviews with his former teammates indicate that many portions of the book are incorrect, embellished or impossible."

Are they minor chronological errors and the complaints of those who are depicted in an unflattering light, or indications of a seriously flawed or even invented narrative? The newspaper clearly implies the latter--but would they have treated Ball Four the same way if it were published today? The author says the book is based on detailed journals he kept at the time and conforms to his recollection of events.

"McCarthy directly quotes people stating incorrect facts about their own lives and tells detailed (and mostly unflattering) stories about teammates who were in fact not on his team at the time. The book's more outrageous scenes could not be independently corroborated or disproved; several teammates who were present said in interviews that they were exaggerated or simply untrue....

"McCarthy recounts game sequences and player performances that were substantially different from what actually happened, including his own games. One scene describes Tony Reagins, the Angels' director of player development, telling McCarthy that his contract is being restructured with incentive clauses. But a copy of McCarthy's original contract, signed a week earlier, before he met Reagins, already included those clauses."

Plus: "The most vocal objector to McCarthy's book has been Kotchman, the manager described at various times as implicitly suggesting to Dvorsky that he try steroids (Dvorsky denies this), going on misogynistic tirades, and ordering a pitcher to hit an Ogden batter in retaliation for a Provo player being hit twice (when box scores from the local newspaper show no Provo player being hit in the series).

"Kotchman read an early copy of the book and had his lawyer, Jonathan Koch of Tampa, Fla., write a 13-page letter to Penguin alleging inaccuracies and requesting it be examined before publication. A Penguin lawyer responded that the concerns were minor and that the company stood by the book's contents."
NYT