John Odom

John C. Odom (January 6, 1982 – November 5, 2008) was an American minor league baseball right-handed pitcher notable for being traded for ten baseball bats while playing in the independent Golden Baseball League in May 2008. Before his stint in the Golden Baseball League, Odom played baseball at Tallahassee Community College and in the minor-league system of the San Francisco Giants.

Because of the trade, Odom was known to fans as "Bat Man", "Bat Guy" and "Bat Boy." Odom left baseball three weeks after the trade, and he died of an accidental drug overdose a few months later.

Early life Odom, 6-foot-2, described himself as a "lost youth." He was kicked off of his high school baseball team in Roswell, Georgia. In , he was drafted in the 44th round by the San Francisco Giants. He missed most of the 2005 season because of a right elbow injury, having Tommy John surgery in June 2005. Dan Shwam, Odom's former Broncos manager, suggests the media and fan response to the trade "drove him back to the bottle, that it put him on the road to drugs again."

The ten bats that the Vipers received for Odom were never used, and the Vipers planned to auction them off for charity, but Ripley's Believe It or Not! purchased them for $10,000.