Michael Lewis is an awesome journalist. I’ve read The New New Thing and Moneyball and enjoyed them both quite a bit. His latest book, The Blind Side, is equally impressive. Below is the summary from Amazon and then my favorite quotes / lines from the book. I highly recommend this book to anyone with some interest in sports and a large interest in inspiring, fascinating stories.
The young man at the center of this extraordinary and moving story will one day be among the most highly paid athletes in the National Football League. When we first meet him, he is one of thirteen children by a mother addicted to crack; he does not know his real name, his father, his birthday, or any of the things a child might learn in school—such as, say, how to read or write. Nor has he ever touched a football.
What changes? He takes up football, and school, after a rich, Evangelical, Republican family plucks him from the mean streets. Their love is the first great force that alters the world’s perception of the boy, whom they adopt. The second force is the evolution of professional football itself into a game where the quarterback must be protected at any cost. Our protagonist turns out to be the priceless combination of size, speed, and agility necessary to guard the quarterback’s greatest vulnerability: his blind side.
Favorite quotes:
* Parcells believes that even in the NFL a lot of players were more concerned with seeming to want to win than with actually winning, and that many of them did not know the difference. What they wanted, deep down, was to keep their jobs, make their money, and go home.
* Offensive linemen were the stay-at-home mothers of the NFL: everyone paid lip service to the importance of their contribution yet hardly anyone could tell you exactly what that was.
* When food is finite, you’d be surprised how much time you spend thinking about it.
* The NFL was loaded with players who had mined a loveless, dysfunctional childhood for sensational acts of violence.
* The funny thing was how unappreciated Michael remained. He was the driving factor in every game and the average fan would have had to force himself to pay attention to him, because the average fan watched the ball."
* In every city in America, rich white kids worked overtime to look and sound like black kids from the ghetto.
* People ask me if I ever reach the top will I forget about them? So I ask people if I don’t reach the top will y’all forget about me? (from "Crownin’ Me" by Playa Fly)
Good review.
I believe it was Lewis who wrote a great article for the New Yorker a few years about life on the offensive line. It’s a little-known fact that the left offensive tackle is often the second highest paid person on offense after the quarterback. On defense the highest paid player is usually the right defensive end, who lines up opposite the offensive tackle. The closest thing to celebrity at this position is Orlando Pace, who was promoted as a Heisman contender by Ohio State back in the 90s.
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great review.
I think it was Lewis who wrote a great article for the New Yorker a few years about life on the offensive line. It’s a little-known fact that the left offensive tackle is often the second highest paid person on offense after the quarterback. On defense the highest paid player is usually the right defensive end, who lines up opposite the offensive tackle. The closest thing to celebrity at this position is Orlando Pace, who was promoted as a Heisman contender by Ohio State back in the 90s.
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