Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Herman Rosenblat has Company in the World of Baseball: Another Fraudster

Seems that a memoir by a former minor league baseball recruit -- who is now a doctor -- is quite fabricated. Attempts to fact check the stories have come up with all sorts of contradictions and falsifications.

The New York Times notes that the author is a graduate of Yale and of Harvard Medical School now working as an intern in the residency program at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital in New York. This is a pretty serious pedigree.

Nonetheless
statistics from that season, transaction listings and interviews with his former teammates indicate that many portions of the book are incorrect, embellished or impossible.

Matt McCarthy, the author -- how would you like to have this guy for your doctor -- insists that the book, Odd Man Out, which is full of salacious stories about various baseball players, is true because it is how he remembers it and it is his reality....

Sound familiar? He could be reading from the Rosenblat/Salomon playbook.

Moreover, the paper notes
this scandal comes during a difficult period for the publishing industry, which has recently had three major memoirs — James Frey’s infamous “A Million Little Pieces” and the recollections of a Holocaust survivor and of an inner-city foster child — exposed as mostly fabricated. The authors of those books have acknowledged their fraud.
Please note the use of the words "fabricated" and the authors have "acknowledged their fraud."

I wonder if Harris Salomon is going to go after the Times and threaten a libel suit unless they print a retraction.

LOL

2 comments:

Dan said...

. . . and yesterday I won the lottery . . . hey, it's my reality . . . where's my money!

Unknown said...

Dr Lipstadt, I just read that NY Times piece on the baseball hoax book, very good reporting. What this shows and illustrates is that YOU were right to go after the Herman Rosenblat hoax story BEFORE it was published and get in cancelled BEFORE it was allowed to get into bookstores and libraries forever, because this sports book hoax is already published and it is too late to recall it or bring it back into the dugout. The damagge is done. But you and your team, from Ken Waltzer to others, did the right thing by trying to get Roseblat's book cancelled BEFORE it ever had a chance to get published and distributed, thus negating the damage its publication might have caused. It is good that you acted pro-actively before the book was published and caused it to be stopped in its tracks BEFORE it could do major damage. This sports book unfortunately has already been published and many people are no doubt reading it and thinking it is all true. Luckily, that did not happen with the Rosenblat fraud, due to your early complaints to the publisher and the New Republic's final take down. Bravo!