| Through exhaustive reporting and interviews, Sports Illustrated writer Selena Roberts will explore A-Rod’s path to a self-destruction so profound it would rate as one of the most dramatic falls in major league history.
Building on her groundbreaking reporting in Sports Illustrated, Selena Roberts delivers the first biography of Alex Rodriguez and explores the full nine innings of his life, not just the one big strike against him--steroids. Roberts chronicles A-Rod as a plunge-in-progress, from his dalliances with strippers to the news that he tested positive for steroids during his 2003 MVP season-a story she broke for Sports Illustrated in February. Roberts goes behind the sensational headlines, probing traumatic events in his childhood to reveal a man torn by his obligation to his family and his insatiable hedonism, while revealing new information about A-Rod’s history of steroid use.
At 33, Alex Rodriguez is the highest paid player in the history of baseball, a once-in-a-generation talent who is about to break many of the sport’s most hallowed batting records-yet he is regarded as a mercenary by most fans. Called “A-Fraud” by his teammates, A-Rod is cheered when he’s on a streak and jeered whenever he slumps. The tabloids can’t get enough of his recent off-field misadventures, which include breaking up his 12-year marriage to party with Madonna. Friends worry that A-Rod has bought into a new lifestyle-that all the lies and contradictions in his life are finally catching up to him and contributing to an epic implosion.
Through meticulous reporting and hundreds of interviews, Roberts analyzes the elements of A-Rod’s freefall, from his strained relationships with teammates to his failure on the field in clutch situations, from his cold business decisions to his steroid use. An extensive look at Rodriguez’s shady real estate deals, deviant personal life and disintegration of his family, and including a chapter on A-Rod’s arrival for spring training where he is forced to confront his new life as a known steroid user, A-ROD is the definitive biography of one of baseball’s most talented-and tragically flawed-athletes.
Annotation:
Hot on the heels of Joe Torre's 2009 bestseller THE YANKEE YEARS, Selena Roberts's tell-all biography of Alex Rodriguez, baseball's highest-paid whipping boy, should provide a productive cache of fresh material for New York's rabid tabloids. Rushed to press to capitalize on A-Rod's reluctant admission to steroid use, a story which Roberts first reported, the book also delves into many of the superstar's off-the-field shenanigans, including his lavish nightlife, trysts with strippers, and questionable real estate dealings. Somehow, while surrounded by a perpetual dervish of media furies haranguing him, Rodriguez continues to excel on the diamond and is amassing statistics that will certainly rank him among the game's greatest, and most vilified, players of all-time.
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