Deford indulges in the worst sort of back-fence psychologizing about how Big Bill, this marvelous athlete and star, ever got that way. Possible causes are his Irving Bieber childhood, with a dominant close-binding mother and a recessive or absent father […] and his inability to sublimate his sex drive into tennis after his glory began to fade […] Throughout the text, Tilden is treated as a totally pathological fruitcake who walked funny, smelled funny and had the social grace of a six-year-old who had to get his way.
Source: wiktionary