Book about steroids in sports to be made into HBO movie

Fainaru-Wada doesn’t believe book had effect on indictment of Bonds

Mark Fainaru-Wada, right, co-authored "Game of Shadows," which will be made into an HBO movie. The book chronicles alleged steroid use by Barry Bonds, left. Zoom Photo

Mark Fainaru-Wada is anxious to see how the movie ends. He is also anxious to see how it starts and what is in the middle.

Fainaru-Wada, a Sonoma County resident, is co-author of “Game of Shadows,” a best-selling book that chronicles San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds’ alleged steroid use and his involvement with BALCO, the now notorious Burlingame laboratory that has been linked to providing steroids to world-class athletes in sports ranging from baseball to track and field.

Movie rights to the book, which Fainaru-Wada co-authored with fellow San Francisco Chronicle reporter Lance Williams, have been purchased by HBO films.

Fainaru-Wada, now working for ESPN.com, says the prospect of having the book made into a movie is “very flattering,” but leaves him apprehensive. “It is such a foreign concept,” he explained. “I have a tough time with anything I can’t wrap my arms around. I’ll just wait and see.”

He said he isn’t sure what part the book authors will have, if any, in the writing and production of the movie. “We’ll be around to answer any questions they have,” he noted.

Production of the movie will be delayed by a strike by Hollywood writers.

While the movie remains very much in the preliminary stage, so, too, does the ending of the Bonds story.

Major League baseball’s all-time home run king has been indicted for lying to a federal grand jury about using illegal performance-enhancing drugs. He is charged with four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice, and could be sentenced to as many as 30 years in jail.

Although “Game of Shadows,” published in March of 2006, details Bonds’ testimony to the federal grand jury in 2003, Fainaru-Wada does not believe it had any affect on the subsequent perjury investigation or the decision to indict Bonds.

The indictment charges that Bonds lied to the grand jury when he said he did not knowingly take banned substances and that his former personal trainer, Greg Anderson, never injected him with steroids. Anderson was jailed for more than a year for refusing to testify about Bonds to the grand jury. He was released on the day the federal indictment was issued against Bonds.

“I don’t think the book had any impact at all (on the federal investigation),” the author said. “The grand jury had been investigating Bonds from the time he first testified. I just don’t think it (the book) was relevant to the investigation.”

Although Bonds is under indictment for allegedly lying, the player’s steroid use is an inescapable part of the story.

“It hinges on two questions,” Fainaru-Wada said. “Did he know what he was taking? And, did he inject himself?”

The book focuses on Bonds and his record-breaking home run chase, and the recent indictment has brought him back into the public spotlight (if he ever left). But “Game of Shadows” also details the entire BALCO scandal and the involvement of many other baseball players and world- class athletes such as disgraced track star Marion Jones, who has already pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators. She has had her records stricken from the books and faces a possible prison sentence.

One of the unknowns is how much of the non-Bonds part of the book would be included in a movie or if the movie would mention the story of former Casa Grande baseball star Rob Garibaldi. As chronicled in the book, Garibaldi took his own life while suffering from what his parents maintain was a steroids-induced depression.

Fainaru-Wada says although that was not the intention of the book, it has helped increase the knowledge of the dangers of steroid use. “It has had some impact,” he said. “It has raised the awareness by the kids about the dangers involved in steroid use.

“It was not our intention to save the world,” he explained. “We were just covering the story because it was a good story and an important story to cover.”

(Contact John Jackson at acsports@arguscourier.com)