A-Rod introduces his children's book in NYC, signs copies

The couple sat down and were joined shortly by their 2-year-old daughter, Natasha. Alex, asked Natasha her favorite color ("blue"), her mother's favorite color ("purple") and her father's favorite song ("doe a deer").

Father and daughter then sang a couple bars of the song from The Sound of Music, although Natasha appeared a bit cowed by the dozens of cameramen and photographers snapping pictures and shouting instructions from behind a metal police-style barricade.

Performing in front of a big crowd takes some getting used to, as readers of Out of the Ballpark learn.

Cynthia read from the book while Alex turned the pages of his copy so the children could follow along with Frank Morrison's lushly painted illustrations.

At some parts, Cynthia Rodriguez paused to note when a passage was inspired by a true story.

"(His teacher) Ms. Gonzalez called his mom and said 'Alex can't play baseball before school because he's too smelly,"' Cynthia said when she reached the part when Alex drags his friend out of bed at 5 in the morning to hit balls.

"I would say it's about 90 percent true," Alex Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez wrote Hit a Grand Slam! when he was with Seattle. It was about a ballplayer growing up in a single-parent home. His parents, Victor and Lourdes, divorced when he was 8.

"I wish I read more as a child," Rodriguez said. "As a child, as a youngster, you can never have too many books."