Vituperation all around (and well-deserved)

Recommended reading: Nicholas Dawidoff’s New York Times review of Selena Robert’s book A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez.

Besides portraying A-Rod as a “a needy, phony, preening, petulant, self-absorbed narcissist” — in Dawidoff’s words — Roberts doesn’t mince syllables when attacking all the elements of the game that were complicit in the steroid scandal.

Writes Dawidoff:

“Ms. Roberts’s depiction of Rodriguez’s agent, Scott Boras, as a greedy, vengeful manipulator in league with the feckless Players’ Association and a pliant commissioner’s office, to help ballplayers inflate their statistics, and so their attendance figures, and so their salaries, is the most devastating part of her book.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/books/15book.html?_r=1&ref=sports