By Jeff Pearlman, HarperCollins, April 2006

No player in the history of baseball has left such an indelible mark on the game as San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds.

In his twenty-year career, Bonds has amassed an unprecedented seven MVP awards, eight Gold Gloves, and more than seven hundred home runs, an impressive assortment of feats that has earned him consideration as one of the greatest players the game has ever seen. Equally deserved, however, is his reputation as an insufferable braggart, whose mythical home runs are rivaled only by his legendary ego. From his staggering ability and fabled pedigree (father Bobby played outfield for the Giants; cousin Reggie Jackson and godfather Willie Mays are both Hall of Famers) to his well-documented run-ins with teammates and the persistent allegations of steroid use, Bonds inspires a like amount of passion from both sides of the fence. For many, Bonds belongs beside Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron in baseball's holy trinity; for others, he embodies all that is wrong with the modern athlete: aloof; arrogant; alienated.

In Love Me, Hate Me, author Jeff Pearlman offers a searing and insightful look into one of the most divisive athletes of our time. Drawing on more than five hundred interviews -- with former and current teammates, opponents, managers, trainers, friends, and outspoken critics and unapologetic supporters alike -- Pearlman reveals, for the first time, a wonderfully nuanced portrait of a prodigiously talented and immensely flawed American icon whose controversial run at baseball immortality forever changed the way we look at our sports heroes.

Asiaing Links:

Visit Jeff Pearlman's Web Site

Download the eBook (Excerpt, PDF, 781KB)

Book Description:

Pearlman, former staff writer with Sports Illustrated and Newsday, delivers a fully realized, if hardly appealing, portrait of baseball slugger Barry Bonds, who has perplexed teammates, fans, and the press for years with sometimes-indifferent play, an almost-joyful cruelty toward seemingly everyone (except kids), and a near-total disregard for the rules of the game, if allegations of his use of performance-enhancing drugs are true. At the same time, Pearlman's Barry Bonds is a man of astonishing talent and, on occasion, humanity. Bonds' career is fully traced here--from his pampered boyhood as the son of another gifted but troubled player (Bobby Bonds) through his successes at Arizona State, through his years as a superstar with the Pittsburgh Pirates and San Francisco Giants, including his pursuit of Hank Aaron's home-run record. Drug-use allegations aside, it's hard not to boo Barry Bonds for the teammate and man he appears to be, so damning is Pearlman's profile. Yet the reader is always reminded of Bonds' supreme talent. A highly readable companion to Fainaru-Wada and Williams' recent Game of Shadows, which relates in greater detail Bonds' alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs. (From Amazon Booklist)

About the Author:

Jeff Pearlman , a former senior writer at Sports Illustrated and a former staff writer at Newsday, is the author of the bestselling The Bad Guys Won! He lives with his wife and daughter in New York State.

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