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All Malcolm Gladwell
by Paul on 12/08/08 at 12:28 PM ET
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from Jeff Merron of ESPN Page 2,
Malcolm Gladwell is a staff writer for the New Yorker and the author of the best-sellers “The Tipping Point,” and “Blink.” He’s also a sports fan, and has plenty to say about how his latest book, “Outliers,” published on Nov. 18 and No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list the past two weeks, sheds lots of light on sports.
Gladwell’s formula in “Outliers”: pick a person, place or thing that’s out of the ordinary. Tell the “conventional” story of why it is so. Then tell the story again, adding on layer upon layer that buries the original explanation below an avalanche of additional “reasons why.”...
The first chapter in “Outliers” is about how some Canadian hockey players born in the first months of the year enjoy advantages that those born later in the year don’t have. You also write that birth month correlates closely with success in other sports. Why is this?
It’s a beautiful example of a self-fulfilling prophecy. In Canada, the eligibility cutoff for age-class hockey programs is Jan. 1. Canada also takes hockey really seriously, so coaches start streaming the best hockey players into elite programs, where they practice more and play more games and get better coaching, as early as 8 or 9. But who tends to be the “best” player at age 8 or 8? The oldest, of course—the kids born nearest the cut-off date, who can be as much as almost a year older than kids born at the other end of the cut-off date.
The book, Outliners, is available at Amazon.com if interested.
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