Theo Epstein "The Mastermind"

ESPN The Magazine - "The Mastermind"
By Wright Thompson

"All teams are more fragile than people want to admit to themselves.

"If we have a horseshit month, if we lose this lead, they will be paying attention to what time I come into the office," he says. "They will be thinking we got complacent. It's a human phenomenon that there has to be a reason for everything. There almost never is. Inexplicable shit, like flipping a coin or the outcome of a baseball game, we need to tell ourselves a story: This team has great chemistry. This team is tough. You know what? That shit all matters, but it's never the full answer that people want it to be. It's why we have stories about the stars in the sky, and the planets and the seas and gods and mythology. We evolve to a point where we can tell and understand the stories. Some are real and some are not, but we attach meaning to all of them.""