Abandoned Books and/or Movies #2

Becoming Manny: Inside the Life of Baseball's Most Enigmatic Slugger; written by Jean Rhodes (professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts in Boston) and Shawn Boburg (reporter at The Record in Bergen County, New Jersey); authorized by Manny Ramirez (leftfielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers, formerly of the Boston Red Sox and Cleveland Indians).

Fun facts you might learn if you read this book:

• As a child, Manny Ramirez suffered from an "intense fear of the dark." (page 23)
• Manny Ramirez's great-grandmother worked as a nanny for the children of the Dominican Republic's "tyrannical dictator, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo." (page 15) (Trujillo pictured below)

• In high school, rather than attend class, Manny Ramirez enjoyed hanging out in the lunchroom and talking to his girlfriend Kathy, friends, baseball fans, security guards, and cafeteria workers. (page 73)

Above, Manny Ramirez versus a fly ball

I read up to page 91 (out of 304) in this book, when Manny Ramirez was a junior in high school. At that point, I stopped reading, because I decided that the book was boring.

Note: Becoming Manny was published in early 2009, so it does not cover Manny Ramirez's 50-game suspension for using performance-enhancing drugs. Manny Ramirez returns from his suspension tonight, in a game against the San Diego Padres.