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David Runciman

  • Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, Balco and the Steroids Scandal That Rocked Professional Sports by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams

Inside a shopping mall in Fargo, North Dakota there is a museum dedicated to the memory of Roger Maris, one-time star of the New York Yankees and home run champion of baseball. When I visited in the mid-1990s I thought it was the saddest museum I had ever seen. The reason it lurks in the entrance to a mall – just a few glass-fronted displays of old shirts, balls and assorted memorabilia for people to glance at on their way to spend money on something else – is that Maris made it clear before his death from lymphoma at the age of 51 that he didn’t want anyone to make a fuss. They had made a fuss of him once before, and he hadn’t liked it at all.

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David Runciman’s new book is Political Hypocrisy: The Mask of Power from Hobbes to Orwell and Beyond.

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