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He brought us baseball in the bush leagues (Bull Durham), the hustle of the blacktop (White Man Can't Jump), the thin line between purgatory and redemption in golf (Tin Cup) and a one-name diamond demon (Cobb). Now, writer-director Ron Shelton is shining his dramatic light on the shadow of steroids.

Shelton and his Tin Cup writing partner John Norville are currently writing a script based on Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO and the Steroids Scandal That Rocked Professional Sports, the best-selling book written by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams on the BALCO steroid distribution scandal. The film will air on HBO (likely in 2009) and will be directed by Shelton if his schedule permits. "It's All The Presidents Men kind of meets the Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight," said Shelton, who also wrote The Best of Times and Blue Chips. "You have the government, you have people like Terry Madden (the former chief executive officer of the U.S. Anti-Doping. Agency, and all of these investigations end up leading to this little mall in South Bay called Balco Labs with this bizarre character named Victor Conte mixing potions for the world's great athletes."

Shelton said a first draft of the script was nearly complete. "I assume in the next few weeks we will have a finished draft and then it's in the hands of HBO," he said. While athletes such as Bonds, Jason Giambi, Marion Jones, and Tim Montgomery are characters in the film, Shelton will not cast actors to play them. Instead, he will use news footage and "let the public record speak for itself." That's not the case for Fainaru-Wada, Williams and IRS special agent Jeff Novitzky. Shelton said he would cast for those parts -- Novitzky is not participating in the project -- as well as former Chronicle editor Phil Bronstein (the former Mr. Sharon Stone). "Do you know that Mike Greenburg, who is one of the producers with [HBO Sports president] Ross Greenburg, was Sharon Stone's first husband," said Shelton. "One day we were in a small room at the Chronicle doing research and we had most of her husbands in the room. I said, Can I buy you guys some drinks? I want to hear some stories."

Fainaru-Wada said he and Williams had a couple of feelers to adapt Game of Shadows for the screen before Mike Greenburg reached out to the authors. He said it's his understanding that they will see the script prior to filming. "It's exciting, its fascinating, it's totally surreal," said Fainaru-Wada. "And I think it will get more surreal and real as we move forward. Both Ron and John have said, Look, when we're finished, we want you guys to look at this and be comfortable. The last thing we want is for there to be something you are not comfortable with. We want it to be realistic and reflect what happened.

"It's totally flattering that HBO wants to make the movie but I really do hope its more about what is in the book and the notion of athletes using the substances and the people who drove the investigation, whether its the feds or whistle-blowers who gave us information. That said, I have no idea what they will do.

Fainaru-Wada plans on being on set for some of the filming, though he has no role in casting. "It'll be weird seeing someone play me," he said. "But whomever it is will be better-looking than me -- which will be very good."

THEY WROTE IT

"Lead analyst Joe Morgan, normally given to excessive speech-making, dubious analysis and fantasy-as-fact observations and recall, seemed downright delusional, Captain Queeg in the Officer's Club with Captain Morgan."
-- New York Post media columnist Phil Mushnick, not shy about his feelings for ESPN baseball analyst Joe Morgan

STUDS

• Mike Emrick has long been one of the NHL's top voices but he did something Saturday night during Versus' Game 1 Stanley Cup coverage that makes viewers appreciate him even more: He admitted a mistake. Emrick went into his goal call after Kris Draper's shot clanged first off the left post behind Peguins goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, then off the right post. The puck, alas, never went in. "I bought it," Emrick told the audience. "But I've bought some bad things before."

• It's always appreciated when a broadcaster cites the newspaper and author of the story he or she is using to fill his or her broadcast. Trust us, it doesn't always happen. (You know who you are, Mr. ESPN broadcaster). After TNT's Doug Collins referred to a poignant story in "the paper" about Luke and Bill Walton, his partner Marv Albert added the pertinent information: The writer was Bill Plaschke. The paper was the L.A. Times. The story is here.

• ESPN often brings in active athletes to serve as analysts after the athlete's team has been eliminated from the postseson. Last weekend, Cavaliers guard Damon Jones made the rounds in Bristol, getting more airtime than Skip Bayless between ESPNNews, SportsCenter and ESPN Radio. He's not a finished product but Jones -- one of the NBA's premier talkers -- offered some interesting insights as well as a welcome bout of humor. He also did someting rare: He trashed an ESPN employee during his stay, taking issue with Jalen Rose for calling out players for playing bad defense when Rose, in Jones' words, played none himself during his career He also took a swipe at Stephen A. Smith for what Jones perceived as general negativity. Keep you eye on this guy when he hangs up his Li-Nings.

•Long overdue, this.

DUDS

• As ESPN's Erik Kuselias painfully learns here, the Awful Announcing blog never takes a day off.

• Call it a hometown discount: I've always had a soft spot for Willie Randolph and I hope he gets at least the rest of the year to fix the Mets. His much-analyzed comments concerning how SportsNet New York (SNY) portrayed him in the dugout came off as paranoid, though he's gotten a raw deal from short-memoried Met Nation who once upon a time were led by Art Howe. That said, Randolph threw Ian O'Connor of the Bergen Record under the journalism bus when he told WFAN's Mike and the Mad Dog program that he assumed the above interview was off the record.

"I just let my guard down there for a second, but again that's still on me," said Randolph. "That's my responsibility." Randolph's assertion puts O'Connor's ethics under the microscope, even if he soft-pedals it by taking "responsibility" for "letting his guard down." That's weak. First, O'Connor had his tape recorder out, a fact vetted by others in the clubhouse. Second, O'Connor is also a well-known columnist with a working credential for that game. "When I interviewed him in the visitors' clubhouse in Yankee Stadium Sundayhe never asked for any part of the conversation to be off the record, nor did I offer to put any part of the conversation off the record," O'Connor told Newsday. You can understand Randolph's self-preservation mode but not to the point of inferring, even gently, that O'Connor sold him out for a sexy story. When someone from old media goes after a blogger (see, Bissinger, Buzz), the sports blogsphere rallies around the aggrevied party with the force of John Rambo. It should be the same with the mainstream media, especially when it's someone with as solid a reputation as O'Connor.

WHAT I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO

You've already read about CBS getting into the mixed martial arts game. The Cronkite Network leaps into the Land of Kimbo Slice Saturday with its presentation of CBS EliteXC Saturday Night Fights. It's a test balloon for the network, but one with little risk: Saturday night is the lowest-rated night on television and mixed martial arts has a rabid auidence. As part of the lead-up to the event, CBS announced that Gus Johnson would serve as the lead host. (Cue up Awful Announcing celebrating its patron saint).

"I don't really view mixed martial arts as a different sport," said Johnson. "My approach is going to be to call mixed martial arts with the same passion, intensity, focus and commitment that I do when I call the NFL, the NCAA, pro basketball or professional boxing or any other sport that I have an opportunity to call."

In an interesting bit of self-reflection, Johnson said during a conference call last week that calling MMA would add some jazz to his career. "I was starting to get a little bored at some of the other things that I was doing," Johnson said. "I think adding this to my career is going to really give me some new life and energy."

LINK OF THE WEEK

The International Herald Tribune (an English-language oasis for anyone traveling in Europe) has been running an ongoing series (the IHT Global Sports Forum) examining the world of sport through the eyes of experts from around the world. Here's a robust discussion on the French Open featuring L'Equipe's Philippe Bouin (France), The Globe and Mail's Tom Tebbutt (Canada), Tages-Anzeiger and Sonntags-Zeitung's Rene Stauffer (Switzerland) and our own Jon Wertheim.