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In a chapter titled “Not Baseball’s Golden Children,” about surly stars, Castle–an author, sportswriter for the Times of Northwest Indiana, and syndicated radio host of the seasonal baseball series Diamond Gems–writes about his methods for getting the notoriously recalcitrant Bonds to open up to an out-of-town journalist. Castle earned Bonds’s trust by swapping him memorabilia concerning his father, Bobby Bonds, resulting in a 2002 interview in which Bonds talked of the joy he felt in being accepted by the fans after his 73-homer season, following years of being considered a distant star.
This casts Bonds in a new light–a tragic one. Bonds was already probably the best all-around player of his generation–but also widely considered an unapproachable star, by fans and the media–in 1998, when he saw Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa soak up the adulation with their home-run race breaking Roger Maris‘s season record of 61 homers. It was then, according to Game of Shadows, that Bonds followed them into what he perceived as their use of performance-enhacing drugs.Why?
