…The Sports Gene by David Epstein. 

The SI writer looks at the role of genetics in sports, never discounting the hard work athletes do, but making a strong case that you probably have to be born with the “right parents” if you want to be a superstar at highly competitive athletics. 

So many topics are considered in this compact 290-page book, including how genetic mutations, race, region, poverty, disease, PEDs, customs and culture determine the development of the elite athlete. It really looks at the question from every angle imaginable.

In doing so, the volume directly defeats foolish narratives we like to attach to sports, even one doozy perpetrated by the magazine Epstein works for, a jaw-dropping 2010 article that asserted that Bulls center Joakim Noah, one of the most ridiculously lucky people on the planet in the sports gene pool, a near seven-footer with a tremendous wingspan and a tennis-champion father, was somehow not “gifted” and had to overcome his “lack of talent” with a “strong will.” The display copy for the story actually read: “Bulls center Joakim Noah doesn’t have the incandescent talent of his NBA brethren. But he brings to the game an equally powerful gift.” Um, really???

Also covered is the idea that someday (probably not soon) we’ll be able to test babies to see if they have the genetic makeup to be great athletes and to guide them into sports that favor explosiveness or stamina depending on whether they will develop more fast-twitch or slow-twitch muscle. That, of course, leads the mind to wonder how such tests would work if expanded beyond sports: Would newborn Robert Zimmerman (later to be known as Bob Dylan) be persuaded from music because he didn’t have the gene for a great singing voice?

Epstein’s book is a brilliant and probing work that’s given me enough ideas to return to for years and years.

And now my ears will bleed even more when people lazily refer to the “10,000-hour rule” as if that standard fits everyone who achieves mastery in some field. Sure, practice is good, but it’s not everything.•