Michael Lewis

When you think of intellectuals influencing the course of human affairs you think of physics, or political theory, or economics. You think of John Maynard Keyne´s condescending line about men of action - how they believe themselves guided by their own ideas even when they are unwittingly in the thrall of some dead economist. You don’t think of baseball because you don’t think of baseball as having an intellectual underpinning. But it does, it had just never been seriously observed and closely questioned, in a writing style sufficiently compelling to catch the attention of the people who actually played baseball. Once it had been, it was only a matter of time - a long time - before some man of action seized on newly revealed truths to gain a competitive advantage.

Chapter five. The Jeremy Brown Blue Plate Special, p. 97