One of the key figures behind the recent triumphs of the Boston team is a baseball statistician and analyst who has been the team's consultant for the past couple of years, and Broadway's Charles Conrad has just signed a first biography of him. The man in question is Bill James and the book is called How Bill James Changed Baseball History by sports author Scott Gray. The book will describe how James turned an early passion for the game and a profound knowledge of math into an unusual career as an ace baseball analyst, a man who studied the factors that enabled teams to win and forced them to lose; his annual Baseball Abstract grew from a small self-published effort to a perennial bestseller. The buy was of North American rights from agent David McCormick at Collins McCormick, and Conrad plans to publish in spring 2006.