The book is a sort of biography of James, mixing in details about his life with a sprawling look at his thinking on many subjects. I enjoyed the book, and if you are either a certified Bill James fanatic or want an introduction to what the fuss is all about, it's worth a read. But the book had three fundamental problems.

The first problem is that Gray is on well-plowed ground here. Michael Lewis' Moneyball, released in 2003, put James' story in the context of the implementation of his ideas by the Oakland A's. Alan Schwarz' The Numbers Game, released in 2004, told James' story again, this time in the context of a historical review of baseball statistics and analysis and their devotees. ...

... In some ways, the tournament does look more like a glorified exhibition than a true world championship. ...

... the most popular moment was the fall by Canadian skater Marie-France Dubreuil during the ice dancing competition. ... TiVo's No. 2 slot was taken by U.S. skater Sasha Cohen: Fans pored over her inarguably virtuoso performance in the Short Program. ...

The five silver gilt trophies representing five Wimbledon Championship wins during 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979 and 1980 will be sold on 21 June at Bonhams' salerooms in Knightsbridge. They will be sold as one lot and are collectively expected to fetch GBP 200,000-300,000. ...

Pity the athletes who come from the country where envy is considered to be a dominant cultural trait and the national disease ("den kungliga svenska avundsjukan," the Royal Swedish Envy).

The Swedish Olympic Committee is upset that the hockey team chose to celebrate with their fans in the middle of Stockholm -- instead of humbly submitting to the Committee's diktat and letting the curling team join in an egalitarian party at the airport.

Swedish gold-winners who did not play ice hockey have been complaining that their own achievement should have gotten equal play ("out of solidarity"). Now some bureaucrats are threatening to sue.

Should one wonder why so many successful Swedish athletes have been leaving the country over the past decades?

Just four days after the Swedish ice hockey team's stunning achievement in the Winter Olympics, the sweet smell of success has been overshadowed by a bitter dispute which could result in the team's disqualification.

The Swedish Olympic Committee (SOC) is threatening to sue the Swedish Ice Hockey Association over the celebrations in Stockholm's Medborgarplatsen which, says the SOC, broke sponsorship regulations.

"This is a serious infringement," said the SOC's chairman Stefan Lindeberg to Svenska Dagbladet. ... "The ultimate consequence of the Hockey Association's actions at the welcoming party is that the team is disqualified," Rosengren told SvD. ...

So, in the midst of all of this peacefulness, all this wonder... why is it I am longing for baseball?

As I extoll and enjoy this silence, I know I am already antsy to hear the crack of a bat, the whiff of a ball into a glove. ...

... he's seen snowboarding evolve from outlaw sport to extreme-athletics juggernaut. Not long ago, it seemed like an awkward, pandering idea for the Olympics to have snowboarders at all. Now snowboard events are a highlight of the schedule.

Snowboarding, once a good way to get ejected from ski resorts, has gone mainstream. In no small part, that's because of White's shaggy charm and the amazing feats of twisting airborne ballet he can perform with a plank of wood strapped to his feet. White is a master of the 1080 ...

Without that legal team ... Agosto and Belbin would have been forced to sit out their second Olympic competition in four years. Belbin, a native of Canada, had a citizenship problem ... she faced a five-year residency requirement, which meant she wasn't eligible for citizenship until 2007. She and Agosto needed a miracle by Dec. 31, 2005, to make the U.S. Olympic team. ...

NBC is paying about $800 million for broadcast rights to the Olympics in the U.S. NBC expects to net a record $1 billion in ad sales for its Olympic coverage. Indonesia's major networks decided a $1.35 million price tag was too much, though they are willing to dish out $10 million to air the 2006 FIFA World Cup. ...

Since the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, every hosting country has either broken even or made a profit on running the two-week event, but the costs are getting out of control. ... If you think the Greeks overcommitted, the Chinese have budgeted $23 billion for the 2008 Olympic games -- seven times more than the Sydney [2000] games, and 32 times what Los Angeles spent for the 1984 Games! ...

In the sports marketing world, advertisers usually have a set sports marketing budget. Each advertiser gets pitched by all the different sports entities competing for those dollars. Among those competitors are both the Olympics and NBA. One of the beauties of the NBA pitch is that our athletes are so recognizable, personable and respected. ... It should be a huge selling point exclusively available to the NBA, but unfortunately that is no longer the case.

When the NBA was broadcast on NBC, it was far less of an issue. ... The NBA is now on ESPN/ABC and TNT. They are paying us a lot of money in a deal that has been working well for all involved. What in the world are we doing helping our partners' competition? Why are we giving our most valuable manpower to a huge business, the Olympics, so they can try to take revenue away from the NBA and our partners? ...

It's also important to remember that the Olympics are not exactly a charitable operation. NBC is paying a ton of money for the right to broadcast the games, but that money doesn't go to the players, the team owners, or the NHL. ... however, the NHL is a player's league, and this decision is ultimately going to be driven by the players. ...

"We did the last [Athens 2004] Olympics with a 4 terabytes central server ... We wouldn't go near an HD Olympics with 4 terabytes. It would fill up within the first three or four days."

Even before deploying for Torino, Paully's artists had created 9 terabytes of pre-built graphics and effects. ...

"During the [Albertville / Barcelona] 1992 games it took us about 48 seconds to render a single frame of video in standard definition. Today we're doing high-def renders in real time. So we're doing in eye blinks what it took us a minute to knock out before." ...

... Far from being a failure, the Games showed that sports are unpredictable, and that the media-annointed favorites often can't live up to the hype ...

The networks and advertisers have a different frame of reference. They're looking for the next star and next media attraction. ...