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RIP, "Bat Man"

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by GuessWho, Mar 3, 2009.

  1. GuessWho

    GuessWho Active Member

    Sorry if a DB, but a sad story:

    http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gTkO15m2l6Wv_mtaQ4684BT9j-hgD96MPF700

    A tragic end for minor leaguer traded for bats

    By BEN WALKER – 19 minutes ago

    "Bat Man" or "Bat Guy" or "Bat Boy" — that's what they called him.

    Ask the most hard-core baseball fan about John C. Odom and most likely you'll get a blank stare. Yet millions of people have heard of the slender right-hander.

    He was the minor league player traded for 10 maple bats.

    It became a big joke last May, when word of the unusual swap jumped off the sports pages, and Odom went from pitcher to punch line.

    He seemed to handle it well, too. A former prospect in the San Francisco Giants' chain — future Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum bunked on his couch in Class A ball — Odom gladly agreed to interviews. He kidded about the kooky deal that made him famous, saying it would make a better story if he reached the majors someday.

    "People are like, 'I'd kill myself' and stuff," Odom said at the time, dismissing any such notion.

    Three weeks after the trade, he abruptly left the team.

    Six months after the trade, he was dead.

    The medical examiner said Odom's death in Georgia on Nov. 5 at age 26 was an accidental overdose from heroin, methamphetamine, the stimulant benzylpiperazine and alcohol.
     
  2. imjustagirl

    imjustagirl Active Member

    Read the whole story on the wire. Just a really tragic, sad story on every level.
     
  3. Trouser_Buddah

    Trouser_Buddah Active Member

    Not saying he should, but do you think the guy who traded him kinda feels like a major douche right about now?
     
  4. 21

    21 Well-Known Member

    'Accidental'?

    Could someone actually take all of that and expect to live??
     
  5. KYSportsWriter

    KYSportsWriter Well-Known Member

    If the story is true about his demons, I don't doubt it for a second.
     
  6. PeteyPirate

    PeteyPirate Guest

    He might have accidentally fallen on some needles, knocking over bottles of vodka and pills that emptied into his mouth.
     
  7. GuessWho

    GuessWho Active Member

    Is it a little odd that he died four months ago and this is just now coming out?

    It would seem his hometown or regional paper would have written something on this that would have been picked up before now. But from the story, even some of the guys he played with and were supposedly pretty good friends didn't know he had passed.
     
  8. BYH

    BYH Active Member

    Jesus Christ. That's a toxic cocktail.
     
  9. Double J

    Double J Active Member

    Um, yeah. The kind of cocktail that even Belushi woulda been like, "nah, I think I'd better pass...." :eek:
     
  10. forever_town

    forever_town Well-Known Member

    My thoughts exactly. What a sad, sad story.
     
  11. ColbertNation

    ColbertNation Member

    I ran it, but that sucker was not easy to trim.
     
  12. HejiraHenry

    HejiraHenry Well-Known Member

    Yeah, like some Doug Ferguson efforts, I would prefer them to move the "for those of you who are living in the 21st century and don't have ass-loads of space to burn on wire stories" version.
     
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