Product Description

The complete inside story of the shocking steroids scandal that turned the sports world upside down

For years, in the shadowy reaches of the world of sport, there were rumors that some of our nation’s greatest athletes were using steroids, human growth hormone, and other drugs to run faster, jump higher, and hit harder. But as track stars like Marion Jones blazed their way to Olympic medals and sluggers such as Mark McGwire brought fans back to baseball with stratospheric home runs, sports officials, the media, and fans looked past the rumors and cheered on the stars to ever-higher levels of performance. Then, in December 2004, after more than fifteen months of relentless reporting, San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams broke the story of the Bay Area Lab Co-operative, a tiny nutritional supplement company that according to sworn testimony was supplying elite athletes, including baseball MVP Jason Giambi, with banned drugs. The stories, exposing rampant cheating at the highest levels of athletics, shocked the nation as sports heroes were brought low and their records were tainted. The exposes led to Congressional hearings on baseball’s drug problems, and a revived effort to purge the U.S. Olympic movement of drug cheats.

Now, in Game of Shadows, Fainaru-Wada and Williams tell the complete story of BALCO and the investigation that has shaken the foundations of the sporting world. They reveal how an obscure, self-proclaimed nutritionist, Victor Conte, became a steroid svengali to multi-millionaire athletes desperate for a competitive edge, and how he created superstars with his potent cocktails of miracle drugs. They expose the international web of coaches and trainers who funneled athletes to BALCO, and how the drug cheats stayed a step ahead of the testing agencies and the law. They detail how an aggressive IRS investigator doggedly gathered evidence until Conte and his co-conspirators were brought to justice. And at the center of the story is the biggest star of them all, Barry Bonds, the muscle-bound MVP outfielder of the San Francisco Giants whose suspicious late-career renaissance has him threatening Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record.

Shocking, revelatory, and page-turning, Game of Shadows casts light into the shadows of American sport to reveal the dark truths at the heart of the game today.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #191373 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

From AudioFile
The abridged version of this book gets right to the point: Barry Bonds and other elite athletes used steroids because that was the only way they could succeed and used other substances to mask this use when they were tested. Some people might not find this surprising, but hearing the actual evidence is jarring to anyone who relishes true competition. Narrator Arnie Mazer's voice is nasally, reedy, combative, and somewhat annoying. In other words, he's the perfect person to read a sports book in which the athletes try to dupe unwitting fans. It's as if Mazer, speaking for the public, is outraged that our baseball, football, and Olympic heroes would sell their souls for one more victory. R.I.G. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Los Angeles Times
A sober, skillful and utterly damning account of not just the Bonds fiasco but the pervasive influence of steroids in sports.

Review
A sober, skillful and utterly damning account of not just the Bonds fiasco but the pervasive influence of steroids in sports. (Los Angeles Times)

Devastating. . . . groundbreaking. . . . Necessary reading for anyone concerned with the steroids era in baseball and track and field and its fallout on sports history. (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times)

A compelling portrait of conspiracy. . . . Fascinating. (The Boston Globe)

Scorching. . . . A testament to baseball’s failure. (Newsweek)

Superb. . . . Important and disturbing. (San Francisco Chronicle)

The evidence is detailed, damning, and overwhelming. . . . It’s a growing bonfire of controversy. This book is one of the matches. (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

[Fainaru-Wada and Williams] have got the goods and they reveal them methodically. Everything is well-sourced and meticulously explicated. (Chicago Tribune)

Customer Reviews

Great, Great, Book. 'nuff said.
Any true fan of baseball will love this book. Not only does it provide factual reporting, but is presented in a way that anyone who picks it up can read it & understand.

It is nowhere near a "long read," it's long, but is written in a way that it will suck you in until you flip that last page. I liked it so much I ordered a copy for my dad!

I am nowhere near a Barry Bonds fan, but this book doesn't 100% focus on Bonds. A great read!!!

The Changing Face (and Body) of Sports
"Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports" details the story of how performance-enhancing drugs have entered the world of sports. As of this time, the case has not been completely wrapped up, with Barry Bonds still awaiting trial for perjury and tax evasion. The book is really a definitive reference to performance drugs, their composition, their effect in bodies and why they work. As banned drugs in most sports, there has been a constant game of cat-and-mouse between athletes and governing bodies to stay one step ahead of the other, to prevent these drugs from being used. In baseball's case, the only governing body for athletes and owners was greed, so using the drugs was winked at by both. The result of this was the creation of records by people who never would have come close to creating them. Equally incredible was the creation of "mutations" (for lack of a better word) in the bodies of users: Barry Bonds, for example, had his shoe size grow from 10½ to 13, his jersey size increase from 42 to 52, and his head grow two sizes, despite being bald - all in his late 30s, long after the normal body grows anything close to this much. No telling what kind of health risks he will be running in the years to come. This is no doubt, though, that this is a riveting book - despite what may seem to be a boring topic, the authors make it a thorough and interesting book.

Well written
Bought this for my husband... he loves it. Good read for those into Baseball and baseball history.