Book dossier

Game of shadows

by Mark Fainaru-Wada, Lance Williams, Lance Williams

The blockbuster New York Times bestseller that caused a media firestorm and stayed in the headlines for weeks at last arrives in paperback—with a new afterword about the Barry Bonds perjury investigation.This is the complete inside story of the BALCO steroids scandal from the award-winning reporters who broke the news nationally. In the summer of 1998, as baseball was still struggling to regain popularity lost during the contentious 1994 players' strike that caused the World Series to be canceled, a race to break the home-run record transfixed the nation. Over the next three seasons, baseball players across the country hit home runs at unprecedented rates. Although sportswriters pointed to suspicions of "juiced" baseballs and small parks being responsible, there were whispers that illegal performance-enhancing drugs were being used. But home runs were big business, and baseball carried on with a weak performance-drug testing regime.In December of 2004, after more than a year of investigation, San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams broke the story that in a federal investigation of a nutritional supplement company called BALCO, Barry Bonds and fellow slugger Jason Giambi had admitted to taking steroids. Immediately the issue of steroids in baseball became front-page news. In Game of Shadows, Fainaru-Wada and Williams expose the secrets of BALCO, illuminating how professional athletes risked their health for a competitive edge.