John Rocker, a former baseball player with the Atlanta Braves, has written a new book to disprove media reports about him. Outside the field, Rocker was always portrayed as a homophobe and a racist. In "Scars and Strikes' he writes of the journalists who he believes were out to prove their preconceived notions about who he was and chose to misquote him instead of telling the truth.

He tells ESPN,"I can't win, even today. I get journalists who try to befriend me and I think I have a good rapport, and when the story comes out, it's not exactly what I said. "It seems that I give them one or two quotes that seems to support the theme they already had."  

Rocker who retired after six reasons and with an ERA of 3.42 started writing the book in 2005 with biographer J. Marshall Craig. He said that finding the right publisher was difficult and he wasn't necessarily excited about how the book was turning out so he stopped to work on other projects.  He is currently running his own real estate business in addition to being a columnist for a conservative newspaper.

"The book wasn't interesting. It wasn't the right time. I just moved on to other things. About two years ago, I started meeting with the right people and got energized again. The conversations resparked the flame and off I went."

In the interview with ESPN he said that he never really cared about what people thought of him and that writing the book was more about "soul-searching" and telling the world about who he really is.  By presenting his authentic self, he believes that people will end up realizing that what was written about him in the past was not true. 

Rocker also talks about the most painful and inaccurate portrayal of him in Sports Illustrated. 

"Do I regret how it was broadcast or depicted? Absolutely. I know me. My friends know me. That story is just one extremely biased perception of me. Unfortunately, a great majority of the American public gets their information from the news media. Many members of the media have traveled to my hometown of Macon, Ga., and have spoken at length to my high school teachers and coaches, my ex-teammates, at least 30-50 people from my past of all races from Hispanics to Asians to African-Americans and all have strongly refuted what Jeff did to me, the image that he created.