Lance Williams

When GAME OF SHADOWS arrived on the scene, the clamor was to know about Barry Bonds and what, if any, illegal drugs he took to fuel his pursuit of Major League Baseball’s all time home run record. To a lesser degree people wanted to know why. Those questions are answered painstakingly throughout the book. In fact, the presentation of Barry Bonds in this book is so brutal, like a villain from a penny dreadful novel, that if it wasn’t true he would have sued. Truth be told, I have been a Bonds hater since he signed with the San Francisco Giants---rival to my LA Dodgers. But even I often blushed at the broad strokes of distasteful behavior that he is shown to be capable of. That, however, is the prurient part of the book. What makes GAME OF SHADOWS a book of historical note is the depth it plumbs into the entire performance enhancing drug culture. The book was criticized upon arrival for not being all about Barry Bonds—as if the rest of it were just padding. Bond’s outsized personality is used to shine a light on the rest of what was going on at the time. Tempting to just use the term steroids when talking about performance enhancing drugs as a short cut, most people have some sense of what those are, but the book reveals that the many different drugs used come from many different places and medical disciplines. Following the drugs from creation to distribution to use is fascinating and the extent to which they have permeated the sports world—including to a very large degree our Olympic athletes who seemingly should have held themselves to a higher standard—is astonishing. Basically an extended newspaper article, the book remains fresh and lively throughout by deftly dropping one story line for another so by the end there is the feeling of having followed the story for months and staying on top of it the whole time. Don’t be scared off if you are not a baseball fan. Or a sports fan. The book reminds us that we may think we have air tight characters, but one wrong decision and we sink like stones.… (lisätietoja)

The BALCO steroid raid was a local headline news "event" for a number of months. I have to admit that I tuned most of it out. Around the same time as the trial I read and enjoyed The Secret Language of Baseball which among its analysis of hand signals had some chapters on previous baseball scandals. So when Game of Shadows was offered up at the local BookCrossing meeting last year, I had to give it a read.

Baseball while an entertaining sport to play and to watch is not all "Mom and apple pie" pure as some would like to believe. Heck, I'd argue that neither is "Mom and apple pie" but I digress. It's a highly competitive team sport that produces a lot more misses than hits. Those team members who can consistently hit the ball well end up being the stars of the sport. With stardom comes the big bucks. Baseball has a history of turning a blind eye to a lot of the underhanded things players and teams do get ahead in the game.

The BALCO thing is just the latest and most recent public example. Game of Shadows covers the people involved in the trial (owners of BALCO, the managers, the players, the investigators, and so forth). It is set up in three equal parts. The first introduces all the "players", the second piece is the events that lead up to the trial and the final third is the trial itself. The trial piece is by far the most interesting piece of the book and I wish more time had been given to it and perhaps to the investigation.… (lisätietoja)