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As Yale senior Matt McCarthy neared graduation, he was like a lot of his classmates in trying to figure out what was next for him in life. The only difference was that he was looking to find a baseball organization to pay him to pitch for them, something he managed when he was drafted in 2002 by the Anaheim Angels organization. He spent a year playing for the rookie-ball Provo Angels in the Pioneer League and went to spring training in 2003 before being cut. In 2009, now a practicing doctor, he wrote about those experiences in Odd Man Out.

Rookie-level ball features a wide mix of players -- hot high school prospects who've been signed for seven-figure contracts, unknowns that the organization is willing to risk the rookie ball salary on, college grads who are seeing if their college stuff is really something someone wants to pay money to see happen, players really too old but who the organization is giving one last chance to show something. McCarthy meets them all during his year in Provo, a tee-totaling Utah community that is not an exact fit for a group of young men with a lot of time and testosterone on their hands. Odd Man relates the long bus rides across the northern plains and the colorful lineup of the Provo Angels. McCarthy finds himself questioning his commitment to baseball when it seems has no way to solve the problem of consistency -- he'll pitch well one night and serve up batting practice the next. Different coaches in the program offer him different solutions (no one suggests breathing through his eyelids) but none seem to work. Although his Yale education would seem to set him apart from his teammates, it's really just one of the quirks they all have, which McCarthy detailed in journals he kept through the season and used when he wrote his book.

Or did he? After an excerpt was published in Sports Illustrated, some of the people McCarthy names said that they didn't remember doing or saying anything like what he wrote that they did or said. New York Times writers did some investigating and saw that McCarthy said some things happened when they couldn't realistically have happened. For his part, McCarthy stood by his manuscript even though he wouldn't produce the journals he said were contemporary accounts of the events he wrote about.

My guess is spotty memories, exaggerated and embellished tales and journal entries that aren't as detailed as McCarthy says they are combine to cause most of the inaccuracies and disputed stories. Plus some of his teammates might not have known they were being documented and acted in ways they would rather not admit to. Odd Man Out is an easy and largely fun read with a mostly likable if quirky cast that show a few cracks here and there. Given that McCarthy took his notes and is writing about experiences that happened when he barely into his 20s, there's not a lot of reflection going on or much to add to other books about of the weird world of minor league baseball. The largely surface-level narrative and questions about some of the just-a-little-too-perfect sequences and events make this an excellent buy when you pick it up at the local library's "clear the shelves" $1.00 apiece book sale.

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Although different incarnations of the Negro National and Negro American Leagues had as many as eight teams apiece, there were two or possibly three teams that stood out from the rest in terms of success on and off the field. The Kansas City Monarchs and their portable lighting system ruled the western area of the Negro Leagues playing area, but back east the Homestead Grays rode the mighty bats of first baseman Buck Leonard and catcher Josh Gibson to dominance. In Beyond the Shadow of the Senators, Brad Snyder explores the history of the team and its connection to Washington, D.C. baseball. He also traces the decline of the team as Major League Baseball began raiding the Negro League teams for talent following integration in 1947.

Cumberland Posey was the principal owner of the team when it stepped up its competitive level from a semipro club of Pennsylvania coal miners to full-time ballplayers. From that date in 1912, the team operated continuously for the next 38 years, surviving the Great Depression and World War II when many other Negro League teams folded. They began playing in Pittsburgh but in 1940 they started playing a significant part of their home schedule at Griffith Stadium in the nation's capital. Washington had a vibrant African-American community that featured all levels of society from wealthy elite to working class, and once the Grays connected with them full stadiums were a regularity. Washington Senators owner Clark Griffith worked well with Posey and cleared more profits from his Grays dates than he did from some of his lowly Senators' home stands.

African-American sportswriters often tried to suggest Griffith be the one to integrated major league baseball, given that Grays standouts like Leonard, Gibson and James "Cool Papa" Bell were better than anyone he was putting in a Senators' uniform. Griffith often weaseled around the unofficial color barrier by hiring Cuban players who might be as dark-skinned as any American player who suited up with a G on his hat instead of a W. Snyder points out the work especially of Sam Lacy, who during stints with the Washington Tribune, Chicago Defender and Baltimore's Afro-American pushed Griffith especially hard on the issue.

As Snyder tells it, Griffith didn't want to bring the Grays greats onto his roster because integration would be the first step in the disintegration of the Negro Leagues. Money, not altruism, drove his feelings, since Posey and the Grays could draw more fans to a two-day stand with the visiting Kansas City Monarchs and their ace Satchel Paige than the hapless Senators might manage during a whole week at home. His cut of that revenue came without any real expense on his part. Snyder also suggests that greed among some of the Negro League team owners kept them from organizing a more united front when Branch Rickey first signed Jackie Robinson, in order to gain concessions that might have helped their teams survive.

Had Posey and Monarchs owner J.L. Wilkinson joined forces, perhaps along with Newark Eagles owner Effa Manley and Indianapolis Clowns' Abe Saperstein, they might have been able to muscle the loosely organized Negro Leagues into organizations that more resembled major league operations. It would guarantee nothing but would have strengthened the Negro Leagues owners in arguments to integrate their existing teams into the major league system, perhaps at the farm club level. As it was, Posey didn't begin a real hard push in that direction until too late. He died in 1946 and his team disbanded in 1950, a collection of aging players that paying crowds had little desire to see.

Snyder is a lawyer by trade and also the author of the Curt Flood biography A Well-Paid Slave, giving him some good insight into baseball's turbulent history with race. He also offers great sketches of Leonard, Gibson, Lacy, Posey, Griffith and the Washington, D.C. African-American community to help fill out his story. He seems to operate with a little bit of a chip on his shoulder vis á vis the Monarchs and Paige, frequently elevating the Grays at their expense even though their last matchup was some 70 years ago.

But those are quibbles with a detailed and cleanly written story of the relationship between two baseball teams -- one stocked with stars kept from playing at the highest level and the other full of also-rans who managed exactly one World Series win in 60 years at Washington before moving to Minnesota. Although integration following World War II sometimes carries an aura of inevitability as we look back, Beyond offers a clear view of the many missed chances to have done the right thing many years before.