San Francisco ? Barry Bonds tried to keep his name out of the BALCO scandal, sending his lawyer into meetings with company representatives to ask for protection, according to a new book.

“Game of Shadows” also details how Jason Giambi turned to performance-enhancing drugs because the Yankees’ first baseman felt pressured to please his perfectionist father, and made contact with Bonds’ trainer to inquire what he was doing “to keep Bonds playing at so high a level.”

And Gary Sheffield, Giambi’s teammate in New York who admitted he took steroids but did so unknowingly, had developed a relationship with Bonds’ trainer and continued to use him as a source for other performance-enhancers – such as injectable testosterone and a human growth hormone – the authors wrote.

Bonds used a vast array of performance-enhancing drugs – steroids, human growth hormone, insulin – for at least five seasons beginning in 1998, according to the book, written by two San Francisco Chronicle reporters. Excerpts from the book, scheduled for release today, were released earlier this month.

The book quotes Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative defense lawyer Troy Ellerman as saying Bonds tried to shield himself from the BALCO scandal. Ellerman said attorneys from the supplement company met “three or four times” with Michael Rains, an attorney for Bonds.

“There wasn’t any payment involved, there weren’t any threats, there wasn’t any quid pro quo, but he made it very clear that Barry would appreciate it if we kept him out of it. And we had several discussions about how Mike Rains knew what the score was – and that is that he knew Barry was using,” Ellerman said in the book.