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Well, ShysterBall read the book. Most of it, anyway ...

But for all of the anonymous source hoopla, I think the book's biggest failing is Roberts' hackneyed theme in which she argues, time and again, that A-Rod's manifest character problems are attributable to his father leaving home when he was a kid, which led to his subsequent search for strong male role models (coaches, steroids dealers, Boras, etc.). I'd say that whole line of the book reeks of sophomore psychology class, but most sophomores wouldn't beat the theme into the ground the way Roberts does.

What's worse, there's nothing to back this up other than (1) the fact that, yes, Rodriguez's father left the family when Alex was a boy; and (2) page after page of Roberts giving voice to what she believes to be Rodriguez's thoughts at given points of his life. She doesn't even go into anonymous source land here. She simply says stuff like "Alex searched for meaning constantly as if the right catch-phrase from a self-help book could ground him in a normalcy he at once longed for and feared." Um, OK, except there's no one who supplies any facts to support a "search for normalcy" or any of the other emotional drama Roberts ascribes to him anywhere in the book.

It's all half-wit, pop-psychology invention. As I've written numerous times in the past two weeks, Roberts has not earned the benefit of the doubt with her previous reporting, so she's certainly not entitled to the benefit the doubt with this purported clairvoyance either.

--snip--

The best I can say about Roberts' book is that it suggests that Alex Rodriguez is an interesting enough character that someday someone will write a good book about the guy. This one certainly ain't it, though. Not by the longest of shots.

This is essentially why I'm not going to read the book. Alex Rodriguez does seem to be an odd person, and thus perhaps interesting, so it's not all that hard to imagine an interesting book about him. But it's not yet the time to write that book, and it's highly unlikely that Selena Roberts is the person to write it. I'm actually reading this book about Manny Ramirez, and one of the co-authors is actually a psychologist, but even he doesn't seem to spend a great deal of time reading Manny's mind.

Which is really, really smart. If there's one thing I've learned over the years (not that I've learned all that much), it's that you're generally better off if you don't assume that you know what someone else is thinking, or that you know why someone else does what they do. Unless you've spent a great deal of time with someone and you know more than a little about human behavior, you're usually going to be wrong. I do stray from time to time, but usually it's against my better judgment. And if you know why I would do something so foolish, please let me know. Or if you must, go ahead and write a book about me.

I won't read it, though.