Synopses & Reviews
In 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 book traces the career of Victor Conte, founder of the BALCO laboratory, an egomaniacal former rock musician and self-proclaimed nutritionist, who set out to corrupt sports by providing athletes with “designer” steroids that would be undetectable on “state-of-the-art” doping tests. Conte gave the undetectable drugs to 28 of the world’s greatest athletes—Olympians, NFL players and baseball stars, Bonds chief among them.
A separate narrative thread details the steroids use of Bonds, an immensely talented, moody player who turned to performance-enhancing drugs after Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals set a new home run record in 1998. Through his personal trainer, Bonds gained access to BALCO drugs. All of the great athletes who visited BALCO benefited tremendously—Bonds broke McGwire’s record—but many had their careers disrupted after federal investigators raided BALCO and indicted Conte. The authors trace the course of the probe, and the baffling decision of federal prosecutors to protect the elite athletes who were involved.
Highlights of Game of Shadows include:
Barry Bonds
- A look at how Bonds was driven to use performance-enhancing drugs in part by jealousy over Mark McGwire’s record-breaking 1998 season. It was shortly thereafter that Bonds—who had never used anything more performance enhancing than a protein shake from the health food store—first began using steroids.
- How Bonds’s weight trainer, steroid dealer Greg Anderson, arranged to meet Victor Conte before the 2001 baseball season with...
Review
Praise for Blood Sport
“A rollicking new book that reads like tragicomic noir fiction.” —Huffington Post Live
“Blood Sport” is riveting…The story of Rodriguezs alliance with Bosch — and their eventual falling-out, with disastrous consequences for both — is a tragicomedy filled with characters straight out of a Carl Hiaasen novel: fake doctors, ex-cons, small-time grifters and a shady tanning-bed repairman whose theft of some Biogenesis documents set in motion much of the legal drama that ensued.”—The Washington Post
“Tim Elfrinks stories have brought down Alex Rodriguez, shut down the clinic that provided A-Rod performance-enhancing drugs, led to the record-breaking suspension of more than a dozen major leaguers and helped to usher in a new, seemingly cleaner era for baseball.”—The Omaha World-Herald
““Blood Sport: Alex Rodriguez, Biogenesis, and the Quest to End Baseballs Steroid Era” is full of juicy bits.” —CBS New York
“Once again, baseball proves to be more scandalous than a telenovela!”—Perez Hilton
“Earnest, well researched, well written…go for the book.”—The Epoch Times
Review
“I cant remember a book that has fascinated, educated—and provoked—me as much as
The Sports Gene. Epstein has changed forever the way we measure elite athletes and their achievements.”
—Malcom Gladwell
“Clear, vivid, and thought-provoking writing that cuts through science anxiety for rank-and-file sports fans.”
—Bonnie Ford, Senior Writer, ESPN
“Many researchers and writers are reluctant to tackle genetic issues because they fear the quicksand of racial and ethnic stereotyping. To his credit, Epstein does not flinch.”
—The Washington Post
“Epsteins rigour in seeking answers and insights is as impressive as the air miles he must have accumulated . . . his book is dazzling and illuminating.”
—The Guardian
“Few will put down this deliciously contrarian exploration of great athletic feats.”
—Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
“The narrative follows Mr. Epsteins search for the roots of elite sport performance as he encounters characters and stories so engrossing that readers may not realize theyre receiving an advanced course in genetics, physiology, and sports medicine.”
—Christie Aschwanden, The New York Times
“An important book . . . The Sports Gene is bound to put the cat among the pigeons in the blank-slate crowd who think that we can all be equal as long as we equalize environmental inputs such as practice.”
—Michael Shermer, The Wall Street Journal
“This is the book Ive been waiting for since the early 1960s. I cant imagine that anyone interested in sports—particularly the fascinating question, ‘How do the best athletes become the best?—will be any less enthralled than I.”
—Amby Burfoot, (1968 Boston Marathon Champion), Runner's World
“A must-read for athletes, parents, coaches, and anyone who wants to know what it takes to be great.”
—George Dohrmann, author of Play Their Hearts Out
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
“A shocking exposé of the seedy side of pro sports that underscores just how easy it is to cheat.”—Entertainment Weekly
Review
“If you have any interest in being at the forefront of change in the sports industry you have to read this book. The Sports Gene
goes far beyond cliche and digs into the science that every professional sports team will have to incorporate into their thinking. It is a must read.” — MARK CUBAN, owner, Dallas Mavericks; chairman, AXS TV; author of How to Win at The Sport of Business
“In The Sports Gene David Epstein blows up the notion that 10,000 hours is all that is required for dominance in a sport and reveals the true complexity behind excellence.”
—DARYL MOREY, Houston Rockets general manager; cofounder of the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference
“There has been nothing like this: a strong yet accessible review of the science and genetics of sports wrapped in personal stories. It will cause readers of all stripes to question their assumptions about just what it takes to become an elite athlete.”
—STEPHEN M. ROTH, exercise physiologist and director of the Functional Genomics Lab, University of Maryland
“Truly a groundbreaking work, contemporary sports journalism at its best. After reading Epsteins superb book—by turns a travelogue, highly readable primer on sports science, and string of who knew? anecdotes—you will never watch sports the same way again.”
—L. JON WERTHEIM, coauthor of Scorecasting
“Step by surprising step, David Epstein takes our hand, grips our mind, and leads us deeper and deeper into the fascinating jungle of sports and genetics . . . until we finally begin to see the miracle weve been watching in our stadiums and on our TV screens all our lives.”
—GARY SMITH, Sports Illustrated writer and four-time National Magazine Award winner
“David Epstein offers the definitive account of what does and does not make an athlete elite. By myth-busting conventional thinking and offering new insights, Epstein has created a must-read for athletes, parents, coaches, and anyone who wants to know what it takes to be great.”
—GEORGE DOHRMANN, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Play Their Hearts Out
"Few will put down this deliciously contrarian exploration of great athletic feats."
—Kirkus (starred review)
"The Sports Gene, written for top athletes and just plain weekend duffers (one of whom tests the bounds of all things human to try to become a pro golfer), is a story told elegantly and with David Epstein's indefatigable powers of investigation. Do elite athletes have innate gifts or can they be produced? I've always wondered--and in this groundbreaking book, I finally have the answer. Spend a few hours. You'll be educated, and you'll be fascinated."
--PETER KING, senior writer, Sports Illustrated
“It does an excellent job covering the scientific basis of athletic performance and amplifies the research with an impressive collection of narrative examples and interviews.”
--MIKE JOYNER, Mayo Clinic physician-researcher and one of the worlds leading experts on human performance and exercise physiology
“Some controversial topics that Epstein tackles are pachyderms other writers might tiptoe uncomfortably around. He examines the roles of race and gender in athletic performance, presenting a wealth of evidence for each theory about why some people become sports stars while others never get out of the beer leagues.”
—Science News
“The Sports Gene is bound to put the cat among the pigeons in the blank-slate crowd who think that we can all be equal as long as we equalize environmental inputs such as practice."
—Wall Street Journal ("important book")
“Epstein is well equipped to explain the complexities of the “sports gene” search. Time and time again, his deeply researched and nuanced investigations of the genetics underlying the athleticism of different races, genders and individuals reinforce a comforting, commonsense conclusion: excelling at sports isnt just a matter of natural talent or nurtured practice—its both.”
—Scientific American (recommended books)
“The narrative follows Mr. Epsteins search for the roots of elite sport performance as he encounters characters and stories so engrossing that readers may not realize theyre receiving an advanced course in genetics, physiology and sports medicine.”
-New York Times
Synopsis
The definitive, deeply revelatory, and wildly dramatic story of the Alex Rodriguez and Biogenesis scandal, co-written by the reporter who broke the story.
All Porter Fischer wanted was the $4,000 Tony Bosch owed him. But Bosch would not pay him back, so he swiped Boschs Biogenesis ledgers as collateral. Fischer eventually examined the lists of clients and treatment plans revealed in the ledgers and saw what he really had: proof that major and minor sports figures came to the Miami antiaging clinic for anabolic steroids, human growth hormones, and other illegal drugs. That included one of the greatest sluggers in modern baseball history, three-time MVP Alex Rodriguez.
When Fischer showed those notebooks to Tim Elfrink, an investigative reporter at Miami New Times, it sparked one of the wildestand costliestsports scandals ever. In Blood Sport, Elfrink teams up with Gus Garcia-Roberts, an investigative reporter at New Yorks Newsday, to finally tell the full story. A-Rod, an obscenely talented and wealthy, self-destructive man, is one of the books central figures.
The tale is rooted in the unique tropical lawlessness of Miami, a city populated with muscle-bulging crooks, spray-tanned fake doctors, and millionaire athletes looking for any chemical advantage. And its a chronicle of Americas latest mad quest for a fountain of youtha billion-dollar obsession with HGH, a drug with uncertain benefits and even hazier risks backed by a mountain of lobbyist dollars. Seven years after Game of Shadows let readers experience the characters and drama inside baseballs performance-enhancing-drug scourge, Blood Sport will demonstrate that the steroid era never ended. It evolved.
Synopsis
The definitive and dramatic story of the Alex Rodriguez and Biogenesis scandal, written by the reporters who broke and covered the story
On January 29th, 2013, an exposand#233; by Miami New Times reporter Tim Elfrink set the sports world on fire. Elfrink revealed that a Miami clinic, Biogenesis, had been supplying illegal performance enhancing drugs and#150; PEDs and#150; to many of the nationand#8217;s top baseball stars. One name stood out among all the others: Alex Rodriguez, the highest-earning player in the game.
Over the next year and more the story would unravel with incredible details about tanning salon robberies, coded text messages, and furtive steroid injections in the menand#8217;s room. In late 2013 Alex Rodriguez would be hit with the longest suspension in MLB history, prompting an ugly fight between him and top league brass. Fourteen other players, including superstar Ryan Braun, were also given shorter suspensions. Tony Bosch, Biogenesisand#8217;s founder, would appear on 60 Minutes in an effort to tell his side of the story.
Whatand#8217;s already been reported in the press has been fascinating; but the story behind the headlines that Elfrink and Newsday reporter Gus Garcia-Roberts have unearthed is even more dramatic and full of new, shocking details. Using exclusive documents, never-before-reported records and interviews with top sources, this book takes the reader inside drug deals, athletesand#8217; mansions, and confidential suspension hearings to tell the true story behind the sportand#8217;s continuing PED crisis.
Both news-breaking sports journalism and wild South Florida noir, Blood Sport is simultaneously a revelatory record of the steroid and PED eraand#8217;s continuing evolution and a call to arms for how to end it and#150; this time, for good.
Synopsis
Blood Sport is riveting . . . a tragicomedy filled with characters straight out of a Carl Hiaasen novel.” The Washington Post The effects of the Biogenesis casethe biggest drug scandal in the history of American sportsare still being felt today. Fifteen Major League Baseball players were suspended, including Yankees superstar Alex Rodriguez, who returns to the field in 2015, after his record season-long steroids ban. Ten men were indicted in federal court. And a new MLB commissioner was elected based on his role leading the response to the case. Now, Tim Elfrinkwho broke that first story in the Miami New Timesjoins forces with Pulitzer Prize finalist investigative reporter Gus Garcia-Roberts to tell the shocking full story behind the headlines. Blood Sport blows the lid off the most expensive scandal in the history of the game, and now includes a brand new epilogue revealing the stunning aftermath of the scandal and its effects for years to come.
Synopsis
Now a New York Times Bestseller! With a new chapter added to the paperback.
In high school, I wondered whether the Jamaican Americans who made our track team so successful might carry some special speed gene from their tiny island. In college, I ran against Kenyans, and wondered whether endurance genes might have traveled with them from East Africa. At the same time, I began to notice that a training group on my team could consist of five men who run next to one another, stride for stride, day after day, and nonetheless turn out five entirely different runners. How could this be?
We all knew a star athlete in high school. The one who made it look so easy. He was the starting quarterback and shortstop; she was the all-state point guard and high-jumper. Naturals. Or were they?
The debate is as old as physical competition. Are stars like Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, and Serena Williams genetic freaks put on Earth to dominate their respective sports? Or are they simply normal people who overcame their biological limits through sheer force of will and obsessive training?
The truth is far messier than a simple dichotomy between nature and nurture. In the decade since the sequencing of the human genome, researchers have slowly begun to uncover how the relationship between biological endowments and a competitors training environment affects athleticism. Sports scientists have gradually entered the era of modern genetic research.
In this controversial and engaging exploration of athletic success, Sports Illustrated senior writer David Epstein tackles the great nature vs. nurture debate and traces how far science has come in solving this great riddle. He investigates the so-called 10,000-hour rule to uncover whether rigorous and consistent practice from a young age is the only route to athletic excellence.
Along the way, Epstein dispels many of our perceptions about why top athletes excel. He shows why some skills that we assume are innate, like the bullet-fast reactions of a baseball or cricket batter, are not, and why other characteristics that we assume are entirely voluntary, like an athletes will to train, might in fact have important genetic components.
This subject necessarily involves digging deep into sensitive topics like race and gender. Epstein explores controversial questions such as:
- Are black athletes genetically predetermined to dominate both sprinting and distance running, and are their abilities influenced by Africas geography?
- Are there genetic reasons to separate male and female athletes in competition?
- Should we test the genes of young children to determine if they are destined for stardom?
- Can genetic testing determine who is at risk of injury, brain damage, or even death on the field?
Through on-the-ground reporting from below the equator and above the Arctic Circle, revealing conversations with leading scientists and Olympic champions, and interviews with athletes who have rare genetic mutations or physical traits, Epstein forces us to rethink the very nature of athleticism.
Synopsis
Now a New York Times Bestseller!
In high school, I wondered whether the Jamaican Americans who made our track team so successful might carry some special speed gene from their tiny island. In college, I ran against Kenyans, and wondered whether endurance genes might have traveled with them from East Africa. At the same time, I began to notice that a training group on my team could consist of five men who run next to one another, stride for stride, day after day, and nonetheless turn out five entirely different runners. How could this be?
We all knew a star athlete in high school. The one who made it look so easy. He was the starting quarterback and shortstop; she was the all-state point guard and high-jumper. Naturals. Or were they?
The debate is as old as physical competition. Are stars like Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, and Serena Williams genetic freaks put on Earth to dominate their respective sports? Or are they simply normal people who overcame their biological limits through sheer force of will and obsessive training?
The truth is far messier than a simple dichotomy between nature and nurture. In the decade since the sequencing of the human genome, researchers have slowly begun to uncover how the relationship between biological endowments and a competitors training environment affects athleticism. Sports scientists have gradually entered the era of modern genetic research.
In this controversial and engaging exploration of athletic success, Sports Illustrated senior writer David Epstein tackles the great nature vs. nurture debate and traces how far science has come in solving this great riddle. He investigates the so-called 10,000-hour rule to uncover whether rigorous and consistent practice from a young age is the only route to athletic excellence.
Along the way, Epstein dispels many of our perceptions about why top athletes excel. He shows why some skills that we assume are innate, like the bullet-fast reactions of a baseball or cricket batter, are not, and why other characteristics that we assume are entirely voluntary, like an athletes will to train, might in fact have important genetic components.
This subject necessarily involves digging deep into sensitive topics like race and gender. Epstein explores controversial questions such as:
- Are black athletes genetically predetermined to dominate both sprinting and distance running, and are their abilities influenced by Africas geography?
- Are there genetic reasons to separate male and female athletes in competition?
- Should we test the genes of young children to determine if they are destined for stardom?
- Can genetic testing determine who is at risk of injury, brain damage, or even death on the field?
Through on-the-ground reporting from below the equator and above the Arctic Circle, revealing conversations with leading scientists and Olympic champions, and interviews with athletes who have rare genetic mutations or physical traits, Epstein forces us to rethink the very nature of athleticism.
About the Author
Mark Fainaru-Wada is an investigative reporter for the
San Francisco Chronicle. After fifteen months of covering steroid use in sports, in December 2004 they reported in the
Chronicle on the secret grand jury testimony of pro baseball players Jason Giambi and Barry Bonds, making headlines around the world. Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams won the Dick Schaap Excellence in Sports Journalism Award, the George Polk Award, and the White House Correspondents’ Association’s Edgar A. Poe Award for their reporting.
Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada are reporters on the investigative team at the San Francisco Chronicle. Together, they broke a series of exclusive stories on the BALCO scandal and earned a string of national honors, including the George Polk Award, The Edgar A. Poe Award of the White House Correspondents’ Association, The Dick Schaap Excellence in Sports Journalism Award and The Associated Press Sports Editors award for investigative reporting.
Williams has written on subjects including the California cocaine trade, Oakland’s Black Panther Party and the career of San Francisco mayor and political power-broker Willie Brown. His journalism also has been honored with: the Gerald Loeb Award for financial writing; the California Associated Press’ Fairbanks Award for public service; and, on three occasions, the Center for California Studies' California Journalism Award for political reporting. He was the Society of Professional Journalists’ Northern California Journalist of the Year in 1999.
Born in Ohio, he graduated from Brown University and the University of California-Berkeley and attended University College, London, U.K. Before joining the Chronicle, he worked as a reporter at the Hayward Daily Review, the Oakland Tribune, and the San Francisco Examiner. He was a University of Michigan Journalism Fellow in 1986-87.