Some people are turned off by armchair pyschoanalyis, but not me. I love it, far more than I enjoy breaking down managerial decisions or roster construction. So let’s return to our favorite superstar head-case, Alex Rodriguez.

This summer, a magazine writer who once wrote a piece on Rodriguez, told me that the Yankee third baseman is clearly a bright and sensitive guy, the kind of guy who doesn’t feel comfortable in the locker room environment. “He knows it, so does everybody,” the writer told me.

I’ve asked some of the Yankee beat writers about Rodriguez and they contend that he isn’t as smart as he thinks he is, but that he does try, too-hard, to be one of the boys.

At the end of the season, I spoke to a Yankee scout who said what I’ve always assumed–Rodriguez’s problems stem from the fact that he didn’t have a father in his life as a kid. Armchair Shrink 101.

I got to thinking about this last week when I re-read an old–and expertly written–profile on Jimmy Connors and his stage mother Gloria, by Frank Deford (SI, 1978):

Playing, competing, with a racket in his left hand, Jimbo is more a Thompson [his mother’s madien name] than a Connors—in a sense, he is Jimmy Thompson. Has any player ever been more natural? But then, in an instant, he wiggles his tail, waves a finger, tries to joke or be smart, tries too hard—for he is not facile in this way, and his routines are forced and embarrassing, and that is why the crowds dislike him. He is Jimmy Thompson no more. He is trying so hard to be Jimmy Connors, raised by women to conquer men, but unable to be a man…He is unable to be one of the boys.

Rodriguez is the natural, he works as hard as anyone, yet he still comes across like a candy ass not a bad ass. I believe that he’s such an achiever that he can do anything he sets his mind to, but he also has a knack, a gift, for getting in his own way, for saying the wrong thing, for coming across exactly how he doesn’t want to come across.

He’ll be in the gossip pages all winter. After what some considered a “down” year in ’08, I can’t wait to see how he’ll produce next season.