How Did Michael Lewis Find Michael Oher for the Blind Side?

Sam Fragoso asked about the controversy around The Blind Side and Michael Oher, the football player who lived with Sean Tuohy in a conservatorship. Lewis and Tuohy grew up together and played baseball. On a Moneyball stop in Memphis, Lewis was also writing Coach, a short book about their high school baseball coach. Tuohy's father had a stroke in high school, the coach replaced his dad, and Lewis wanted Tuohy's thoughts. In the car Tuohy asked who writes the books and would not believe Lewis writes them. They had sat in the back of English class.

At the house Lewis saw a large Black kid on the sofa. Nobody made an introduction. At the hotel Lewis asked who the kid was. Tuohy said Leigh Anne Tuohy had gotten him off the streets, he went to their kid's school, he had no bed, and they had taken him in. It was January or February of Oher's junior year.

Moneyball then opened other sports. The San Francisco 49ers showed salaries by position. The left tackle, who guards the quarterback's blind side, had gone from the lowest-paid player on the field to the second-highest. About nine months later Sean Tuohy called. Oher had been identified as a left tackle, and the stories met. The publisher had little enthusiasm, the book started slower than the others, and it was a risk: unknown people, family drama, and football strategy. Oher loved the book. The trouble started when the movie became a huge hit. Lewis says it generated something like three hundred million dollars at the box office and cost nothing to make. Oher got upset that there was not more money for him.