The invisibility of luck

I got this passage off of Curt Schilling's blog; he's the one responding to the question:

"Bradford: When referencing this potential move, some have cited the Yankees decision to go with high-priced talent in the early 2000’s instead of the “heart and soul” guys that were on the championship teams. Is that kind of chemistry/clubhouse influence overstated?

Me: No, no and a million more times no. The easiest way to figure that out is to play fantasy baseball right? Take the 2004 Yankees on paper, play them against ANY other 2004 team and play a 5×5 league. How do they fare? I’d expect REAL well and pretty dominating? There is so much that happens outside the 3-4 hours of games each day
that impact and influence teams in a way no statistician or ‘expert’ can ever hope to define or quantify. It affects wins and losses, it affects clubs state of mind, it affects everything."

Let me preface this by saying I don't dislike Curt Schilling like a lot of people do; sure, he's loud and opinionated, but isn't that what we want from athletes? Don't we get tired of them not giving real answers to questions?

Anyway, with that out of the way, his answer is quite fascinating for how it illustrates the average person's complete unawareness of luck, randomness, and small sample size. He points out the fact that the 2004 Yankees would dominate any other 2004 team in fantasy baseball as evidence of the effect of intangibles on baseball performance. It's hard to see how that's evidence because, in real life, the 2004 Yankees damn near made it to the World Series. Schilling clearly believes it was intangibles and clubhouse vibe that made them miss it, but, let's face it: they lost their ticket to the big show over the course of 4 games. That's an extremely small sample size, it could have easily gone the other way, and the Red Sox had luck on their side. Now, granted, this isn't to say the 2004 Red Sox weren't a good team, because they were a great team, and got to the World Series in part through excellent performances. However, it's not enough just to be good; sometimes you need luck on your side, too.

What's fascinating about this is that Schilling, of course, was right in the middle of that Red Sox performance. He, clearly, believes that luck played no role in his team's victory, but rather it must have been entirely their performances. Although he has benefited from luck, he is blind to it. I suspect this happens quite often to people. When remarkable things happen to them, they are blind to the extent to which it was just dumb luck, and must find reasons to ascribe to them.