Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports (Paperback)

by Mark Fainaru-Wada (Author), Lance Williams (Author) "On a steamy May morning in 2001, at North Carolina State University, Victor Conte could see it all coming together..." (more)
Key Phrases: doping calendars, trash recon, used banned drugs, The Clear, San Francisco, Victor Conte (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
A compelling portrait of conspiracy. . . . Fascinating. -- The Boston Globe

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

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

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)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Gotham (March 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592402682
• ISBN-13: 978-1592402687
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (111 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #116,893 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

85 of 99 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Sad Cautionary Tale Broader Than the More Publicized Bonds Disclosures, March 25, 2006

By	Ed Uyeshima (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports (Hardcover)

It's hard not to feel a profound sense of disappointment after reading this comprehensive, well-written investigative report on the abuse of steroids by athletes blinded by their need to be victorious in their various fields. While Barry Bonds is the primary subject here, San Francisco Chronicle reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada are not as interested in sabotaging the star player's legacy-in-the-making as they are in exposing the breadth of impact that Victor Conte, founder of BALCO (an acronym for the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative), had in plying a number of star athletes with performance-enhancing drugs.

The reporters have done a remarkable job documenting the history of steroids, which were used as far back as the 1976 Summer Olympics where the East German women all too handily dominated the swimming events. One revelation for me from the book is how steroids do not directly enhance athletic performance but allow a greater endurance to train harder with a decreasing chance of injury and no need for recovery time. This nuance is critical in understanding how athletes can justify using such risky substances and escape accountability for their actions. This is the moral twist of the book and the one that resonates most clearly as a cautionary tale for future athletes in assessing their options.

Just as intriguing is the detailed chronicle of the rise and fall of the enterprising Conte, who went from being a bass guitarist for Tower of Power to the owner of a holistic health clinic to a highly paid consultant for renowned Olympic and professional athletes. Conte's real fortunes began with his discovery of a means to provide performance-enhancing drugs which would elude detection. At first, he saw the availability of obviously illegal steroids to targeted athletes as an opportunity to get them to endorse his legal nutritional supplements. Demand, however, went beyond his expectations, and he refocused his energy to identify creative ways to get the drugs into athletes, whether by injections, ointments or drips under the tongue.

At the center of the BALCO distribution scandal has been Bonds, who is certainly held up as the highest profile athlete under Conte's spell. The co-authors paint an alternately sympathetic and unflattering portrait of a prodigiously gifted athlete cast under the shadow of his father Bobby. The portrayal doesn't come across so much as exploitative as it does a typical case study into the competitive mindset of a professional athlete. Triggered by Mark McGwire's record-breaking 70 home runs during the 1998 season, Bonds was apparently determined to surpass McGwire by turning to steroids to bulk up his physique in the same way. His constant connection was personal trainer Greg Anderson, and through the next five seasons, Bonds' usage escalated and became more clandestine.

The result has been a stellar performance on the field with a hulking physique to match his superman-like transformation. Off the field, he evolved into a raging egomaniac not above cheating on his taxes or his wife. These are hostile allegations but ones that Williams and Fainaru-Wada support with reams of testimony by intimates and colleagues. In 2001, Bonds beat McGwire's single-season home run record, and he is on his way to beating Hank Aaron's career home run record this coming season. At the same time, Conte and Anderson, thanks to expert plea bargaining, saw minimal prison time for their actions. Whether Bonds is being held up as a scapegoat seems rather moot, as I cannot help but feel this will be an empty victory given the ample evidence the co-authors provide here. With Bonds' evasive responses in the press and the inevitable slander lawsuits, one gets little sense that there will by any abatement on the problem at hand.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bonds Fans: Take Note!, November 11, 2006

By	A reader (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports (Hardcover)

I don't know how anyone can read this book and retain a shred of respect for the athletes who pumped themselves up with steroids and an array of other illegal substances, in order to best their competition. The authors call them what they are: not champions, but drug cheats. Bloated hulks like Barry Bonds- who continues to lie about his steroid use- should have been thrown out of baseball years ago. Where is Judge Landis when we need him?

The book also details the drug cheating in other sports, and the athletes' justification that, if they didn't use steroids, they would have no chance to excel in any professional sport- that's how rampant steroid use is. The authors also detail how government officials, in thrall to the business of professional baseball and reluctant to do anything that might damage the sport, continued to protect even those athletes who had admitted in closed testimony to steroid use, by refusing to make their names public.

But despite the momentary furor this book caused when it first came out, nothing has really changed. MLB's drug testing procedures are a joke. Bonds has been allowed to go right on hitting his drug-cheat home runs, and will no doubt eventually break the all-time home run record set by Hank Aaron- a disgrace if there ever was one!

The picture the authors paint of Bonds is appalling- what an arrogant, obnoxious, over-privileged SOB! Dislike of Bonds has nothing to do with his race, although he likes to think that it does. People dislike him because he's not only a drug cheat, but a liar, an abuser of women, a serial adulterer, an insulter of fans, teammates, and reporters, and a generally worthless human being. But I guess that's of no importance to Bonds' blindly loyal fans.

This is a birlliant piece of investigative reporting!

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not fun to read, but it's not meant to be., June 16, 2006

By	M J Heilbron Jr. "Dr. Mo" (Long Beach, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports (Hardcover)

"Game of Shadows" is about...well, heck...you KNOW what it's about.

As a baseball fan, I found myself a little sad about the whole thing. So much about the last few years seems kinda bogus. Maris didn't deserve an asterisk. Bonds does, I think.

As a physician, I found myself a little scared. These guys are doing things to their bodies that's gonna kill 'em early, and kill 'em in foul ways. It's sickening to think how their metabolisms have been manipulated to create inhuman athletes; these people are not natural...they were not created by nature. They are artificial. They're Frankenstein's monsters.

As a moral person, I found myself angry. This is cheating, plain and simple, and it's being done in front of the most loyal yet impressionable fans...the kids.

The only problem with the book is the shrill and repetitive Bonds-bashing that gets a little old by the end. It's almost like the authors are really angry with Bonds; you get the sense that their personal feelings and sensibilities were hurt. Listen...I'm with you guys. No way does a basbeball player have not only the best years of his career, but the best years of ANYBODY'S career, after the age of 35, without SOME additional support. But sometimes the tone of the book is like that of a spurned lover out for revenge. A little too vituperative.

But hey...this is an important book. There is no doubt that Bonds' legacy is in question. The question you should have, and the one I surely have, is why hasn't baseball shut this down. Please...they are still punishing Pete Rose, yet this has all happened in front of their noses and they seem to look away. The argument could be made that the public wants the long ball, and this is the way to get it.

I say the public wants to see the game played hard and fair. Cleaning up this business would prove that the baseball administrators really are who they say they are: fans just like us.