全通翻譯/翻譯社

聽懂《魔球》作者麥可‧路易士原汁原味演說片段

I think it really is true to say that there's no such thing as being too stupid to be able to play baseball, that it is the sport you can play with just minimal amount of mental activity. And it attracts people who are qualified, and those people are not well-equipped to run regressions analysis or to think creatively about data, or to ask interesting questions about how you go about gathering data from a baseball field. So, in order to do this thing that the Oakland was doing, you had to bring in a different kind of person — a person a lot like the kind of people who are in this audience and who often had no experience in sports but had a lot of experience with thinking about data.

I was watching the Oakland players come out of the showers, and it was the first time I'd seen the team without their clothes on, and it was a really unpleasant sight. And I was sitting there watching them, and I thought, if you line those naked bodies up against the wall and asked someone to identify what those people did for a living, no one would guess they were professional athletes. No one would guess they were professional athletes. Maybe hedge fund managers, but no one would guess they were professional athletes. So, with this insight — or what I took to be an insight — I ran to the Oakland front office, and I said, I just saw your guys — and a baseball uniform covers up a lot — and I just saw your guys without their clothes on and we got to have some talking to do, because this was weird; they just look — they all look so bad. And Paul DePodesta, who was the second in command — Harvard graduate in charge of R&D — said in a funny way that's exactly the point. He said, for a player to become a member of the Oakland A's, he has to be defective in some way.

有人說再笨的人都會打棒球，我認為這句話確實沒錯。從事這類運動，只需要最低程度的心理運作。這種運動吸引了具備足夠體育技能的人士，而他們並不擅於從事迴歸分析、或對數據提出創意思考，或者如何從棒球場上蒐集的資料提出有趣的問題。所以，要做和奧克蘭運動家一樣的事，你就必須找來不同類的人——就像在場觀眾這一類的人，缺乏體育經驗，卻有很多思考數據的經驗。

我看著奧克蘭運動家隊的球員走出淋浴間，這是我第一次看到整隊球員沒穿衣服的模樣，那畫面真的一點都不好看。我坐在那裡看著他們，心想，要是叫那些沒穿衣服的傢伙排成一列站在牆邊，然後請人猜他們從事什麼職業，想必不會有人猜得出他們是職業運動員。沒有人會猜他們是職業運動員。可能有人會猜是避險基金經理人，但一定沒有人猜得到他們是職業運動員。所以，獲得這項洞見之後——至少我認為是如此——我跑進奧克蘭運動家隊決策人員那兒，對他們說，我剛剛看到了你們的球員——棒球制服能遮住很多東西——我剛剛看到你們的球員沒穿衣服的模樣，我們要談談，因為這實在是太詭異了；他們所有人看起來都糟透了。當時擔任球隊經營副手的保羅‧德波戴斯塔——他畢業於哈佛，負責研發工作——說了一句很好笑但切中要點的話。他說：要成為奧克蘭運動家隊的球員，就一定要在某個方面有所缺陷。

資料來源：biz 互動英語電子報