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Being a Giants fan, this probably isn’t the best way to get ready for the season, but while the boys of summer are enjoying spring training, I’ve been reading the new paperback edition of Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports. Two things of interest / note…

First, I kind of followed the coverage in the Chronicle as the story broke, so I knew the general outline of the story with Victor Conte, Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi and the rest of that illustrious crew.  But I didn’t know the extent to which Conte, Greg Anderson and the other BALCO hangers on were such sycophants, clutching at the hems of not only the baseball stars, but also the doping Olympic track and field stars.  Nor did I know the extent to which those athletes relied on Conte and BALCO; I guess this speaks to the lack of an open, transparent market for undetectable performance-enhancing drugs.  If you’re Marion Jones, you can’t fire your dealer just ‘cause he’s creepy.

Second, Fainaru-Wada and Williams do a great job of presenting the Bonds stats that back up their case that what has happened in the latter stages of his baseball career is, frankly, insane.  Appendix Two of the book is full of analysis (charts and graphs!) of Bonds’ career, homeruns per at bat, comparing composite careers before and after steroids, etc. It won’t be enough for the sabremetrics crowd, but it was enough to help bolster the reporting…

If you’re a baseball fan (or a track and field fan, for that matter), you owe it to yourself to pick it up.