Note to Self: The Importance of not Giving a Shit about Conventional Wisdoms

The next day, after my credential had expired and I’d headed back to New York, I sent my friend David Laurila, a former colleague of mine at Baseball Prospectus and a veteran interviewer, on a reconnaissance mission to see if he could get something more useful out of Pedroia. But Pedroia wasn’t much more talkative, giving Laurila about the blandest quote imaginable. “You know what? I’m a guy who doesn’t care about numbers and stats,” he told Laurila. “All I care about is W’s and L’s. I care about wins and losses. Nothing else matters to me.”

Pedroia had learned to speak in this kind of cliché after getting himself into all kinds of trouble when straying from the party line. Like the time he called his hometown of Woodland, California , a “dump.” 7 “You can quote me on that,” Pedroia told Boston magazine, “I don’t give a shit.” He doesn’t give a shit. I would come to realize that without that attitude, Pedroia might have let the scouting reports go to his head and never have made the big leagues.

Source

Silver, Nate (2012-09-27). The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't (pp. 76-77). Penguin Group US. Kindle Edition. 

Silver, Nate (2012-09-27). The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't (p. 77). Penguin Group US. Kindle Edition.