This latest addition in the Freakonomics-driven behavioral economics  genre is probabaly the best. It is Scorecasting and to a sports fan it  is a can't-put-down type of book. The book is written extremely well  with a mixture of famous sporting anecdotes and hard statistics that  include research of the authors and others.  Some of the eye-opening subject include: 1. very solid evidence that umpires bias games - however what is  interesting is the bias is not random. The bias tells a story. 2. the subject of home-field advantage was mesmerizing. Turns out  not at all what sports pundits tells us are true or at least not in the  way you might think so. 3. incentives lie at the heart of the Chicago Cubs dismal century.  4. great use of numbers to show how desperate baseball players are  to have a batting average of at least 0.300.  5. a look into why some stats are not telling us all we need to know  (i.e. blocked shot stats in basketball). 6. why don't football coaches go for it on 4th down when it is a  statistically correct move? Turns out that psychology (namely loss aversion) and incentives  dictate a lot of sports decision making. There are several shorter chapters that seem to be 'unfinished'  which is a shame. For instance a chapter just mentions the Yankees  'buying' of championships. It would have been great to see a more in  depth statistical analysis of how spending money predicts success in  baseball.  As I hear constantly on the sport talk radio, the Seattle Seahawks  benefit from their 12th man - the crowd. It would have been interesting  to see if this claim stacks up and is in fact a larger effect on winning  than at other venues.