To celebrate the opening of baseball season, decided to delve into the most talked about baseball book of recent years. I was as surprised as I was dissappointed. The book became notorious for outlining the success of the small market Oakland A's at maintaining their competitiveness despite humble funds. The A's brain trust used computers, creative statistics and thinking outside the box to scoop other teams for the best players. At the time the A's had been consistently good....but the passing of seven years offers a different perspective. The dissapointing part of the book is that the revelatory statistical analysis that was supposed to have given the A's such an advantage, is really just another tool. Like any other tool in a gold mine, it will uncover it's share of nuggets. The 2002 draft which is followed in delightful detail, can be viewed differently now that the players have had a reasonable time in the minors. The A's had stocked up several extra first round picks because of losing several free agent players. Their choices, at the time still question marks, have not proven to be any better than an average draft. The players that have been the most successful were sought by many other teams...and thus not a product of their new way of thinking. With all their extra early picks, you can argue that they should have done much better. For example, one of the players they were praying someone else would "waste" a draft pick on was only Prince Fielder who is doing quite well these days. Their open minds bashed him because his father Cecil Fielder was overweight his whole career. While I found much of the statistical analysis interesting, when they broke down much of a ball player's success to "luck", the whole argument lost air. Now the surprising part, was how much I enjoyed not only the inside the baseball world mechanics, but the profiles of players like Scott Hatteberg and Chad Bradford and others involved in the game. The gradual unfolding of their stories and how their skills evolved to keep them in the big leagues was intriguing and even endearing. The A's General Manager, given the lion's share of the credit for the A's success, is quite captivating....almost appearing a work of fiction at times. His desperate need to succeed to the point of being not only unpleasant to be around, but also self destructive captivates in an often ludicrous way that someone from Joseph Heller's Catch 22 might. On the whole enjoyable, but not always in the ways they intended.