About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherPenguin Publishing Group

ISBN-101592401996

ISBN-139781592401994

eBay Product ID (ePID)50424516

Product Key Features

Number of Pages352 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication NameGame of Shadows : Barry Bonds, Balco, and the Steroids Scandal That Rocked Professional Sports

SubjectSports Medicine, Pharmacy, Baseball / General, General, Pharmacology

Publication Year2006

TypeTextbook

Subject AreaSports & Recreation, Medical

AuthorMark Fainaru-Wada, Lance Williams

FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height1.2 in

Item Weight19.6 Oz

Item Length9.3 in

Item Width6.3 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

LCCN2005-037750

Dewey Edition22

Grade FromEighth Grade

IllustratedYes

Dewey Decimal362.29

Grade ToUP

SynopsisIn the summer of 1998 two of baseball leading sluggers, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, embarked on a race to break Babe Ruth¿s single season home run record. The nation was transfixed as Sosa went on to hit 66 home runs, and McGwire 70. Three years later, San Francisco Giants All-Star Barry Bonds surpassed McGwire by 3 home runs in the midst of what was perhaps the greatest offensive display in baseball history. Over the next three seasons, as Bonds regularly launched mammoth shots into the San Francisco Bay, baseball players across the country were hitting home runs at unprecedented rates. For years there had been rumors that perhaps some of these players owed their success to steroids. But crowd pleasing homers were big business, and sportswriters, fans, and officials alike simply turned a blind eye. Then, 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, Yankees slugger Jason Giambi had admitted taking steroids. Barry Bonds was also implicated. Immediately the issue of steroids became front page news. The revelations led to Congressional hearings on baseball¿s drug problems and continued to drive the effort to purge the U.S. Olympic movement of drug cheats. Now Fainaru-Wada and Williams expose for the first time the secrets of the BALCO investigation that has turned the sports world upside down. Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroid Scandal That Rocked Professional by award-winning investigative journalists Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, is a riveting narrative about the biggest doping scandal in the history of sports, and how baseball¿s home run king, Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants, came to use steroids. Drawing on more than two years of reporting, including interviews with hundreds of people, and exclusive access to secret grand jury testimony, confidential documents, audio recordings, and more, the authors provide, for the first time, a definitive account of the shocking steroids scandal that made headlines across the country., 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 nations 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 baseballs 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 superstarswith 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 Aarons 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., Told by the award-winning reporters who broke the story, this is the completeinside scoop of Barry Bonds and the shocking steroids scandal that rocked theprofessional sports world.

LC Classification NumberRC1230.F35 2006