Moneyball

Noticed this on Friday but couldn't get to it earlier:

In the Times' big story on the Oakland A's resurgence this season, they marvelled at the team's success with untested youth:

Yet other teams have smart players with skill and vision. Tampa Bay has had several first-round draft choices over the years. Texas is loaded with young talent, as are Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and others. But those teams do not get off the ground, while Oakland soars.

How to explain this contrast? Surely it must be through Billy Beane's unparalleled, unprecedented brilliance?

Perhaps another potent stealth force is inside the A's clubhouse. "It's clubhouse chemistry," Zito said. "What it does is bring every ounce of talent out of these guys."
When Eric Chavez, now 27, arrived in 1998, he entered a mature clubhouse. "Now it has leveled out," he said. "I'm finally playing baseball with my peers. It took me six years to do so. We're always youthful. We're always young."

Well sure, that's just players - they're full of superstition. Not our boy Beane. He a stathead - he knows there's no such thing as clutch, he knows that closers are useless, he knows that it's all about talent, not some baloney about team chemis-

"Baseball teams have self-esteem, just like a teenager. Sometimes it can be high, and sometimes low. When you build success, it helps build self-esteem, and that creates those intangibles that allow momentum to happen," [says Beane]

Huh. I wonder what the insufferable statheads of the world are thinking right now?