A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez - Softcover

Roberts, Selena

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061791652 ISBN 13: 9780061791659

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2010

Synopsis

The highest-paid player in the history of baseball and widely regarded as the greatest in the modern game, the Yankees' Alex Rodriguez ensured his place in the record books in 2007 when, at thirty-two, he became the youngest player to hit five hundred home runs. But his reputation changed drastically two years later, when Selena Roberts broke the news in Sports Illustrated that he had used performance-enhancing drugs while playing for the Texas Rangers and later with the Yankees.

In A-Rod, Roberts chronicles Rodriguez's extraordinary life, going beyond the sensational headlines to reveal a man torn by obligation to his family and the pull of insatiable hedonism. Ultimately, Roberts captures Rodriguez as a tragic figure in pinstripes: the man once considered the clean exception of the steroid generation revealed as an unmistakable product of its greed and dissolution.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Alex Rodriguez is the highest-paid player in the history of baseball, a once-in-a-generation talent poised to break many of the sport's most hallowed records. In 2007 he became the youngest player, at 32, ever to hit 500 home runs, solidifying his status as the greatest player in the modern game, and months later he signed a contract that would keep him with the Yankees through the end of his career.

His reputation changed drastically in February 2009 when Selena Roberts broke the news in Sports Illustrated that A-Rod had used performance-enhancing drugs during his 2003 MVP season with the Texas Rangers. Her report prompted a contrite Rodriguez to admit illegal drug use during his 2001–2003 seasons with the Rangers, who had signed him to the most expensive contract in Major League Baseball history.

Although he admitted to three seasons of steroid use, the man teammates call "A-Fraud" was still hiding the truth. In the first definitive biography of Alex Rodriguez, Roberts assembles the strands of a bizarre and extraordinary life: from his boyhood in New York and the Dominican Republic through his near-mythic high school career and fast track to the big leagues, the whole of A-Rod's career mirrors the rise and fall of the steroid generation.

In A-Rod, Roberts captures baseball's greatest player as a tragic figure in pinstripes: the man once considered the clean exception of the steroid genera­tion revealed as an unmistakable product of its greed and dissolution.

About the Author

Selena Roberts, formerly a columnist for the New York Times, is a senior writer for Sports Illustrated. She lives in Connecticut.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0061791652
• ISBN 13: 9780061791659
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272