* Rocket's red glare nothing but 'roid rage?

Jeff Pearlman’s bio on Roger Clemens came out a few months back. Do we really need another? I’m reading American Icon: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America’s Pastime right now, so I’ll save my comments on it till I’m done. In the meantime, here are a few items from other sources FYI.

From NYYankeeRumors.com, an interview with one of the authors, who ends the Q&A with his assessment of why people whould by the book. “It gives you a real detailed look at how the greatest pitcher of our time, maybe the greatest pitcher ever, responded to the allegations in the Mitchell Report. It tells a story about Clemens’ fall from grace in a level of detail that people haven’t seen before. We talk about a specific player, but I think his reaction to the Mitchell Report, and the things that we learned from his reactions, told us a lot about the culture of steroids in baseball. So it tells a lot about an individual player, but there is also a greater social story being told here.”
The Vancouver Sun goes back and reviews Pearlman’s book. Upshot: “despite its title, [it] is not a smear job on the man known in baseball circles as The Rocket. It just appears that way because of the overwhelming evidence that the subject spent much of his career living a lie.”
The Mercury News (Silicon Valley) does a dual review wiith both pieces. Upshot: “The Pearlman book is a well-written account of a ballplayer who has not led a well-lived life — and this is an understatement. The Daily News volume is not as well-written (it is irritatingly repetitive and the language less elegant), but it’s more graphic and, in the end, more damning.”
And The New York Times’ take. Upshot: “American Icon does a nimble job of conjuring up the gym-rat culture in Texas that promoted the use of performance enhancement and anti-aging drugs, and the must-win culture in Major League Baseball that made such drugs appealing to certain players: like superstars intent on breaking more records, injured ones desperate to heal, and aging ones eager to reboot their careers.”