This is the second time that Mark Fainaru-Wada has joined The Luncheon Society. A couple of years ago, Mark and his co-author Lance Williams wrote the well-regarded “Game of Shadows,” which detailed the rise of anabolic steroids, BALCO, and the athletes whose careers were—at first-helped by these drugs—but then ultimately humiliated as their records were removed and their medal were stricken.
Back then–when the denials came steadfast and furious–Mark was convinced that Lance Armstrong was using a cocktail of performance enhancing steroids. He was right. In the end, Armstrong has been exposed as a fraud by his teammates and relegated to a special place where fallen heroes spend their lives in ignominy.
For these athletes, both in the Olympics and within America professional sports, it showed just how plentiful these drugs were for player use. Most perniciously, it showed how American sports fans were more than willing to look the other way as baseball players like Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire, and Sammy Sosa magically bulked up to pound an unbelievable number of baseballs out of American and National League ballparks.
Now Mark Fainaru-Wada joins his brother, Steve Fainaru, to look at another darker area of American sports—the relationship between football and long term chronic illnesses as a result of sustained head injuries.
League of Denial. The story begins in 2002 with the death of Mike Webster, the rugged Hall of Fame Center for the Pittsburgh Steelers, who went from a crowd favorite to being rendered homeless only a few years after his retirement. By the age of 50 he was dead and his the story of downward cognitive spiral became national news.
This book was central to the PBS Frontline documentary, also titled “League of Denial.”
The Luncheon Society 