By BILL BRADLEY
Sacramento Bee

It sounded like something straight out of the Watergate scandal.

Federal investigators raided a small pharmaceutical laboratory. It was first reported Sept. 6, 2003, in a small daily paper, the San Mateo Daily Journal, sparking the interest of newspaper reporters at major metro newspapers. Less than two years and numerous indictments later, the scandal became known merely as BALCO — short for Bay Area Lab Cooperative — and has turned into one of the biggest sports stories in years.

	San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada (left) and Lance Williams received the 2004 George Polk Award for their coverage of the BALCO investigation.

At the heart of the BALCO investigation have been the sports departments from two Bay Area newspapers — the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury-News. Combined, they have reported nearly every angle and have beaten back every other local and national media on the story.

While the BALCO scandal has not had the same shockwaves the Watergate ordeal did, the aftershocks were strong enough to hit Washington. Last month, Congress held a hearing that included a who's who of baseball players and drug officials with claims that illegal steroid use by athletes runs rampant.

The two papers are located 47 miles apart. In terms of news and metro coverage, the Chronicle tries to cover the entire San Francisco Bay Area, but mainly covers the general San Francisco area while the Mercury-News focuses on the South Bay. Yet both papers cover the San Francisco Giants with a passion, and that is where the interest in BALCO began.

"Our Metro department did not express a great deal of interest in the story at first, but Mark Fainaru-Wada (the Chronicle's sports investigative reporter) and I found it intriguing that Greg Anderson's name was involved," said Chronicle sports editor Glenn Schwarz, referring to the personal trainer of Giants outfielder Barry Bonds.

"It took us a few weeks to build up sources. Mark was on loan to newsside to do some campaign reporting. But after this broke he did maybe one campaign story for the next year and half. He became a BALCO beat writer."

	Elliott Almond (left) and San Jose Mercury-News sports editor Craig Lancaster have been at the front of the coverage of the BALCO investigation for their newspaper.

Along the way, the Chronicle sports reporters John Crumpacker, Gwen Knapp, Ron Kroichick and John Shea got involved as BALCO seeped into their beats. Metro investigative reporter Lance Williams also began working with Fainaru-Wada.

At the Mercury-News, executive sports editor Craig Lancaster was the Oakland Raiders beat writer when the story broke, which meant he was soon involved when a number of Oakland players were indicted.

"We had the sense that it was big when the raid went down," said Lancaster, who was promoted to executive sports editor three months ago. "It looked odd, especially for a laboratory to be raided by guys toting guns and all that.

"It really didn't become a sports concern until last March. That's when I took over day-to-day editing of the story and I had come back inside as deputy sports editor, which was more coincidental than anything else. From there, our sort of initial run of breaking some stories began."

Elliott Almond, who has a reputation as one of the nation's best sports investigative reporters, became the lead writer for the Mercury-News. During the next year, sports reporter Mark Emmons and investigative reporter Pete Carey got involved.

Amid the battle for BALCO breaking news, it was apparent that an old-fashioned newspaper war was on. The Chronicle would report news implicating the Raiders' Bill Romanowski; the Mercury-News would break track athlete Tim Montgomery's involvement. Back and forth it went.

"It was a healthy competition," Schwarz said. "We knew the Mercury was going to be competitive on it. We figured a lot of the big national papers, like New York Times and USA Today were going after it. ... It helped push up the energy level."

As the stories continued to develop, it was clear that each paper found its niche in reporting the scandal. The Chronicle was leading the way on the baseball aspect of the story while the Mercury-News was out front on much of the Olympic/track and field news.

"It felt like both papers were in the middle of the ring trading shots," Lancaster said. "Glenn and I met up at a retirement dinner for one of our writers, and we both agreed we were having some of the most fun we have had in a long time, going to sleep at night not knowing what the other guy had."

Both papers volleyed until last December when the Chronicle got the biggest break of them all — a leak of grand jury testimony from federal court in San Francisco. Those testimonies included baseball players Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi admitting under oath that they had taken illegal steroids. They also added the terms "cream" and "clear" to the sports vocabulary.

"That was the watershed moment," Schwarz said. "You look at the change that was occurred and not that many stories that we do effect that much change. Our reporting caused people to open up about the issue."

The domino effect included the creating of Major League Baseball's steroid policy, which only happened after the sport re-opened its collective bargaining agreement in January, and the congressional hearings that included day of denials and no-comments from the sport's biggest stars.

"In some respects, it is the most rewarding story I've every worked on," Schwarz said. "It's definitely the longest running off-the-field story I've been involved in.

"It elevated the reporting of people in the sports department. From a sports editor's point of view, what it has done in the department is sharpened all of our reporting skills. They've been passionate and done a great job trying to report on it."

And, while Lancaster didn't think BALCO would be remembered as big as Watergate, he said the saga has become a landmark story in sports journalism.

"I looked back and saw upwards of 300 stories about BALCO by my paper since it broke," Lancaster said. "That's nearly a story a day. While some of those are merely turns of the screw, some of those had a fair amount of news in them.

"While it may not be ultimately important to the average American, it was a pretty big story when it is all said and done."

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