01:00 AM EDT on Monday, July 10, 2006

The book is called Feeding the Monster. How Money, Smarts, and Nerve Took a Team to the Top. It's written by Seth Mnookin, and it's a look inside the palace gates of the Red Sox.

A very close look.

Mnookin, a former senior editor at Newsweek magazine, was given virtually total access to the Red Sox by owner John Henry, complete with his own desk and passkey to most of the offices. Henry's obvious plan was to have his ownership group immortalized as the one that brought a world championship to Boston for the first time in 86 years just three years after they bought the franchise. That's certainly the book's spine.

But that's not the interesting part.

The interesting part is the behind-the-scenes intrigue Mnookin uncovers, everything from the deterioration of the relationship between Larry Lucchino and Theo Epstein, to Nomar's paranoia and Curt Schilling's self-absorption, to the uncoachability of both Pedro and Nomar, and other airing of dirty laundry that Feeding the Monster floats in the breeze. In short, General Hospital in cleats.

For instance:

Bill James conducted a study on how much a player's lack of hustle negatively affected the team.

Guess who the star of that particular study was?

"To the rest of the baseball world, Manny Ramirez looked like a hitting savant who was anchoring a prodigiously potent lineup," writes Mnookin. "To the Red Sox, he was, with his $20-million-per-year price tag, looking more and more like a player making too much money for his aggregate contribution to the team."

Ramirez's insubordination was the greatest challenge to Grady Little. "In 2002 Little made no secret about the fact that he felt Ramirez and Pedro Martinez were essentially uncontrollable."

When Little did not take out a a visibly tiring Pedro in the seventh game against the Yankees in 2003, Henry turned to Lucchino and said, "Can we fire him right now?"

Nomar became increasingly uncomfortable playing in Boston, uneasy with the scrutiny of the media. He also grew increasingly bitter about what he perceived as his below-market contract, to the point that he once said he thought the team was not tending to the infield in an attempt to make him look bad, and speculated whether the front office was bugging his phone.

When Lucchino was being castigated for his alleged mishandling of the deal that would have brought Alex Rodriguez to Boston in January of 2004, it came at the same time Epstein was being lauded as a great young general manager, a new folk hero.

Lucchino came to believe Epstein was one of the people telling the media he had bumbled the A-Rod negotiations. "At that point he thought that Theo had committed a sin, and he never moved off of that," Mnookin quotes an unnamed Sox official as saying.

Their relationship never was the same.

Curt Schilling arrived in Boston like an elephant walking into the middle of the clubhouse.

"For a player who made a point of how perceptive he was, Schilling failed to take an accurate pulse of his new teammates, and his constant appearances, newly ubiquitous ad campaigns, and self-anointment as the new face of the team rankled many of Boston's players.

"And no one was more upset by Schilling's arrival than Pedro Martinez."

By the end of June, 2004, Garciaparra was in a funk.

"His teammates were telling reporters -- on background, of course -- that he's become a distraction, always moping around his locker just to the left of the clubhouse door." He had become so unhappy that, when some Sox officials took an informal poll, many of his teammates said it would be better if he were playing for some other team.

The Nomar trade intensified the deteriorating relationship between Lucchino and Epstein. This time Epstein feeling that Lucchino had "hung him out to dry."

Manny refused to shake Terry Francona's hand when he first met him in spring training in 2004, swearing at him instead. He also screamed at Sox executives, calling them " . . . white devils" for trying to trade him to Texas.

Last year was a disaster, with an assortment of players complaining about a lack of playing time, specifically Kevin Millar, Bill Mueller and Jay Payton. Not that they were the only ones.

"They became the biggest collection of prima donnas ever assembled," Mnookin quotes one Red Sox executive talking about last year's team. "It's a problem with a veteran team, especially one that's had some success. And winning the World Series makes it worse."

At Henry's urging, Lucchino and Epstein met last Oct. 11 to clear the air. The meeting backfired. By the end of the month Epstein had resigned.

Epstein later told Henry that the traditional problem with the Red Sox was too much short-term thinking, too much concern with the Yankees, and too much concern about what the newspapers are saying.

Yet Feeding the Monster ends on an upbeat note.

"It's much better," says Henry about the state of the Red Sox. "It's good."

So is the book.

breynold@projo.com / (401) 277-7340