There may be no entrapped pool of human talent left on earth with the dollar value of Cuban baseball players.
Sharpest keyboard in the west Michael Lewis on Cuban baseball players

I felt as intensely focused as a diamond-cutting laser; Grand Theft Auto IV was ready to go. My friend and I played it for the next 30 hours straight.
Guy gets addicted to coke, pot and Grand Theft Auto

Instead, I was waiting for someone… said to be a genius and a paranoid obsessive, the greatest chess player who ever lived and an obnoxious crackpot. I was looking for Bobby Fischer.
Potted history of the potty recluse Bobby Fischer

I can unequivocally say that this is one of the top five most abysmally, hyperventilatingly, throbbingly appalling experiences of my life. The only small ray of consolation was that I wasn’t alone … It’s not just me being humiliated, it’s the culture and inhabitants of an entire continent.
sportreview.net.nz writing hero AA Gill goes to the gym in Manhattan

Harry Nilsson, of the great songs, magnificent voice and the going on the piss with John Lennon a lot in the 70s is a big fav here at sportreview.

Later in his career, he attempted to write a stadium chant (along the lines of creepy Gary Glitter’s Rock and Roll (Part Two)) for the LA Dodgers, who, like Harry, were originally from Brooklyn.

01 Yo Dodger Blue (L.A. Loves You) – Harry Nilsson (MP3, 6MB)

via For The Love Of Harrry

Moneyball is about a new approach to baseball, hiring Harvard statistics nerds to scout talent, going deep inside the stats to find the most effective players. Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane, portrayed as an obsessive perfectionist lead the A’s to the play offs several times early in the noughties with a fraction on the budget of most teams. Using number crunching to scout meant the A’s recruited players who were fat, old or just had weird technique who, crucially, got the job done – on paper.

Michael Lewis is one of the smartest writers around, and he brings this world of number crunching and hours alone with Excel to life. This book caused a storm in Baseball with theories that flew in the face of what ‘traditional baseball guys’ valued. It would be fascinating to see this approach applied to Cricket, another sport that lends itself to statistical obsession.

Recommended.

Michael Lewis article on Moneyball in Basketball (NY Times).

Hilarious / cautionary tale of Dock Ellis pitching a no-hitter, while off his tits on LSD:

The middling hurler — whose career record stands at 138-119 — claims he dropped acid not knowing it was a game day, and took the hill despite being “high as a Georgia pine.” He tells viewers about imagining Jimi Hendrix in the batter’s box, Richard Nixon calling balls and strikes and coping with a ball that constantly shifted in size.

Wikipedia has the full story.