I’m always impressed when a well-done magazine excerpt sharpens my anticipation of a book, rather than removing the need to read the full-length work.
I first read about Michael Oher in Sports Illustrated (Sep 25, 2006). Michael Lewis’s full book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game goes deeper and broader, to great effect.
The game is American football. The blind side is the quarterback’s vulnerable side, the left side for the right-handed quarterback. Lewis traces how Lawrence Taylor and Bill Walsh, from different angles, raised the value of the offensive lineman most responsible for protecting the blind side, the left tackle.
Michael Oher is, quite literally, a very large example of the trend. As a high school kid, he was huge and agile, and those two attributes in combination changed his life for the better. The story of that change is remarkable.
While I enjoyed Moneyball and other Lewis accounts, The Blind Side made me care a lot more. Without preaching — but with a clear point of view — Lewis demonstrates how capricious American life can be. Lewis only learned about Michael Oher because he happened to go to elementary school with Michael’s adoptive father, and rightly points out how many Michael Ohers are lost to the disadvantages placed in front of them.
Lewis contributed a related piece to the New York Times last week, Serfs of the Turf, advocating that colleges pay their football players. His research into and continuing interest in the story of Michael Oher informs this viewpoint (not a new one).