Life & Wisdom Quote by Michael Lewis

Lewis is aiming at a particular kind of American priesthood: the credentialed sports knower who turns a messy, probabilistic game into a morality play with heroes, grit, and “intangibles.” The line is funny because it’s constructed like a concession and then a trap. “People who think they know” sounds generous, almost diplomatic, until he tightens the vise: they’ll persist “no matter how much evidence” says otherwise. The repetition of “think” is the tell - he’s not just disputing a bad take, he’s diagnosing a closed epistemology where confidence outruns reality.

The subtext is Moneyball-era frustration: baseball is unusually measurable, and yet the public conversation around it often treats numbers as trivia and narrative as truth. Lewis isn’t attacking fans; he’s targeting the institutional incentives of announcers and sports media. Hot takes are sticky, and admitting error is costly. If your job is to fill airtime or column inches, certainty reads better than nuance, and anecdote beats regression every time.

What makes the quote work is its quiet escalation from description to indictment. “All of the sports press” is broad enough to sting, but the real punch is psychological: even “evidence” won’t penetrate because the identity is built on being right. Lewis is less interested in baseball than in how expertise gets performed in public - how a culture that worships data can still choose story, especially when story pays.