Outliers Read Free Page A

ways we cannot begin to imagine. It’s not enough to ask what successful people are like, in other words. It is only by asking where they are
from
that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn’t.
    Biologists often talk about the “ecology” of an organism: the tallest oak in the forest is the tallest not just because it grew from the hardiest acorn; it is the tallest also because no other trees blocked its sunlight, the soil around it was deep and rich, no rabbit chewed through its bark as a sapling, and no lumberjack cut it down before it matured. We all know that successful people come from hardy seeds. But do we know enough about the sunlight that warmed them, the soil in which they put down the roots, and the rabbits and lumberjacks they were lucky enough to avoid? This is not a book about tall trees. It’s a book about forests—and hockey is a good place to start because the explanation for who gets to the top of the hockey world is a lot more interesting and complicated than it looks. In fact, it’s downright peculiar.
    3.
    Here is the player roster of the 2007 Medicine Hat Tigers. Take a close look and see if you can spot anything strange about it.
No.
Name
Pos.  
L/R
Height
Weight
Birth Date
Hometown
9
Brennan Bosch
C
R
5′8″
173
Feb. 14, 1988
Martensville, SK
11
Scott Wasden
C
R
6′1″
188
Jan. 4, 1988
Westbank, BC
12
Colton Grant
LW
L
5′9″
177
Mar. 20, 1989
Standard, AB
14
Darren Helm
LW
L
6′
182
Jan. 21, 1987
St. Andrews, MB
15
Derek Dorsett
RW  
L    
5′11″
178
Dec. 20, 1986
Kindersley, SK
16
Daine Todd
C
R
5′10″
173
Jan. 10, 1987
Red Deer, AB
17
Tyler Swystun
RW
R
5′11″
185
Jan. 15, 1988
Cochrane, AB
19
Matt Lowry
C
R
6′
186
Mar. 2, 1988
Neepawa, MB
20
Kevin Undershute  
LW
L
6′
178
Apr. 12, 1987
Medicine Hat, AB
21
Jerrid Sauer
RW
R
5′10″
196
Sep. 12, 1987
Medicine Hat, AB
22
Tyler Ennis
C
L
5′9″
160
Oct. 6, 1989
Edmonton, AB
23
Jordan Hickmott
C
R
6′
183
Apr. 11, 1990
Mission, BC
25
Jakub Rumpel
RW
R
5′8″
166
Jan. 27, 1987
Hrnciarovce, SLO
28
Bretton Cameron
C
R
5′11″
168
Jan. 26, 1989
Didsbury, AB
36
Chris Stevens
LW
L
5′10″
197
Aug. 20, 1986   
Dawson Creek, BC
3
Gord Baldwin
D
L
6′5″
205
Mar. 1, 1987
Winnipeg, MB
4
David Schlemko
D
L
6′1″
195
May 7, 1987
Edmonton, AB
5
Trever Glass
D
L
6′
190
Jan. 22, 1988
Cochrane, AB
10
Kris Russell
D
L
5′10″
177
May 2, 1987
Caroline, AB
18
Michael Sauer
D
R
6′3″
205
Aug. 7, 1987
Sartell, MN
24
Mark Isherwood
D
R
6′
183
Jan. 31, 1989
Abbotsford, BC
27
Shayne Brown
D
L
6′1″
198
Feb. 20, 1989
Stony Plain, AB
29
Jordan Bendfeld
D
R
6′3″
230
Feb. 9, 1988
Leduc, AB
31
Ryan Holfeld
G
L
5′11″
166
Jun. 29, 1989
LeRoy, SK
33
Matt Keetley
G
R
6′2″
189
Apr. 27, 1986
Medicine Hat, AB
    Do you see it? Don’t feel bad if you don’t, because for many years in the hockey world no one did. It wasn’t until the mid-1980s, in fact, that a Canadian psychologist named Roger Barnsley first drew attention to the phenomenon of relative age.
    Barnsley was at a Lethbridge Broncos hockey game in southern Alberta, a team that played in the same Major Junior A league as the Vancouver Giants and the Medicine Hat Tigers. He was there with his wife, Paula, and their two boys, and his wife was reading the program, when she ran across a roster list just like the one above that you just looked at.
    “Roger,” she said, “do you know when these young men were born?”
    Barnsley said yes. “They’re all between sixteen and twenty, so they’d be born in the late sixties.”
    “No, no,” Paula went on. “What
month
.”
    “I thought she was crazy,” Barnsley remembers. “But I looked through it, and what she was saying just jumped out at me. For some reason, there were an incredible number of January, February, and March birth dates.”
    Barnsley went home that night and looked up the birth dates of as many professional hockey players as he could find. He saw the same pattern.