John Odom

While reminiscing on Facebook with my roommate Evan, he randomly asked me if I remembered this guy named John Odom who had played on our high school baseball team back in the day. I replied that I vaguely remembered him, and Evan went on to tell me that he had been caught up in a sort of controversial draft in the baseball minor leagues. Supposedly he started off in the SF Giants' minor league affiliate but was then drafted to some other minor league team in exchange for, not another human being or money, but ten high quality baseball bats...

Now, although he quickly became a sort of joke in the baseball community, as this sort of thing never seems to happen, he seemed to take it pretty well, joking about it in interviews. People even went so far as to stamp the ten bats with the serial inscription: "John Odom Trade Bat x/10".

Well, supposedly as time passed, he started going downhill, asking to take time off from the sport to spend time with his dad (or something like that), and then something like three months later he turned up dead, having O.D.'ed on multiple drugs/alcohol.

Crazy story. I had NO idea about this until today. Poor guy. I didn't really know him, but I do remember him being at school in my grade. Crazy story...