The Only Rule Is It Has to Work Quotes

“Gonsalves, who’s in there not because he’s the pitcher most likely to get an out, but because Conroy’s the closer, and the closer’s the closer because he’s the closer, bro.”
― Ben Lindbergh, The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team

“Eric Schwieger (pronounced “Schweeg,” “Schwayg,” or “Schwag,”
― Ben Lindbergh, The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team

“The other guy lives in a big house, too. Not all failure corresponds to a lack of effort. Or a lack of desire. Or a lack of preparation. Or a lack of skill. We lose, sometimes, because the other guy is also really good. I”
― Ben Lindbergh, The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team

“The other guy lives in a big house, too.”
― Ben Lindbergh, The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team

“Indeed, I’d become convinced that the only way our minds are changed is by slow absorption, the feeling that other people we respect all believe different things than we do. The best argument is, essentially, peer pressure. Of”
― Ben Lindbergh, The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team

“Its premise, based on the work of political scientists, was that the worst thing a president can do to advance his positions is to state them; as soon as he does, a huge number of people will position themselves in opposition, and they will lose the ability to be swayed by any contradictory evidence. That”
― Ben Lindbergh, The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team

“Clustering illusion, where we underestimate the likelihood of “clusters” of events happening by chance. Even if Oddo directed baseballs with total randomness, the odds of getting four balls pulled in a row by luck alone wouldn’t be that long—about one in sixteen. But it didn’t occur to me that what I was watching could be a fluke. Focalism, where we put too much weight on the first piece of information we acquire. Base rate fallacy, where we ignore universal truths (like “lefties pull a lot of grounders”) in favor of narrow, specific data. And,”
― Ben Lindbergh, The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team

“Availability heuristic, where we overestimate the likelihood of events that have greater “availability” in our memories. I noticed the landing spots of Oddo’s hits largely because I was so focused on Oddo, surprised as I was to see him here and regretful as I was that we hadn’t signed him. Confirmation bias, where we focus mostly on new evidence that supports our existing beliefs. I assumed that Oddo, a left-handed hitter with a long swing, probably pulled the ball a lot. When he pulled the first four, I used that tiny sample to convince myself he was an extreme pull hitter. Clustering”
― Ben Lindbergh, The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team

“They exist for history, and we take joy from them because we accept that they are superior at an arbitrary assortment of skills that we have collectively decided have value. Rather,”
― Ben Lindbergh, The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team

“If the A’s were “a collection of misfit toys,” as Michael Lewis wrote, then we’ll be building a team out of toys that got recalled because they were choke hazards. Nothing”
― Ben Lindbergh, The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team