By the author of the bestselling Moneyball: in
football, as in life, the value we place on people changes
with the rules of the games they play.
The young
man at the center of this extraordinary and moving story
will one day be among the most highly paid athletes in the
National Football League. When we first meet him, he is one
of thirteen children by a mother addicted to crack; he does
not know his real name, his father, his birthday, or any of
the things a child might learn in school—such as, say, how
to read or write. Nor has he ever touched a
football.
What changes? He takes up football, and
school, after a rich, Evangelical, Republican family plucks
him from the mean streets. Their love is the first great
force that alters the world's perception of the boy, whom
they adopt. The second force is the evolution of
professional football itself into a game where the
quarterback must be protected at any cost. Our protagonist
turns out to be the priceless combination of size, speed,
and agility necessary to guard the quarterback's greatest
vulnerability: his blind side.