Theodorakis/News Alex Rodriguez takes a break from working out in Tampa on Thursday.
Alex Rodriguez was an insecure prima donna who made a clubhouse attendant load his toothbrush with toothpaste after every game in his three seasons with the Texas Rangers, a new book charges.
The Rangers were also required to send a basket of food to the controversial All-Star's hotel suite during road trips, Sports Illustrated columnist Selena Roberts reports in "A-Rod."
Many Texas teammates kept their distance from A-Rod, who they saw as a spoiled superstar. His relationship with other players didn't improve when Rodriguez joined the Yankees in 2004.
His Bomber teammates regarded A-Rod as a phony and a hypocrite because he tried to project an All-American public image while pursuing a swinger's lifestyle.
During a series in Texas, Roberts writes, A-Rod went to a sex club while his wife, Cynthia, pregnant with their first child, was at home in New York.
Rodriguez also turned off teammates by bragging about wild nights with strippers - and by making clumsy passes at other players' wives and girlfriends.
"He would use these corny pickup lines on a guy's wife," one former teammate told Roberts. "He just wanted to know that he could, not that he would act on it. Seemed like an ego thing."
As the Daily News first reported Thursday, "A-Rod" contends Rodriguez may have bulked up with steroids as early as high school. It also suggests the third baseman regularly used human growth hormone after he joined the Yankees in 2004.
Rodriguez acknowledged using performance-enhancing drugs after Roberts and S.I. reporter David Epstein reported earlier this year that he tested positive for steroids in Major League Baseball's 2003 survey testing.
Rodriguez insisted he only used the illicit drugs from 2001 to 2003, while playing for Texas. He told reporters last spring that he stopped using steroids before joining the Yankees.
"A-Rod" was to be released on May 12, but publisher HarperCollins moved up the release to Monday after The News revealed some of the book's bombshell allegations.
Roberts also details Rodriguez's obsession with teammate Derek Jeter. Players who accompanied A-Rod to clubs said his favorite pickup line was "Who's hotter, me or Derek Jeter?"
Roberts writes that Jeter bested Rodriguez in charity efforts: Jeter's Turn 2 Foundaton donated more than $15 million to charities over an 11-year period beginning in 1997. Rodriguez's AROD Family Foundation was beset by administrative problems and was temporarily shut down in Florida in 2008.
"There was Jeter, always besting him, even as the humble do-gooder," Roberts wrote.
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