Scorecasting by Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim

Co-written by a sportswriter and an economist, Scorecasting uses statistics to examine and debunk popularly held ideas about sports. Focusing primarily on baseball, basketball, and football, it explores such topics as home-field advantage, referee bias, hot streaks, and why certain types of players are overvalued. It also has an entire chapter on the Cubs and why they, unlike most other teams, have historically enjoyed consistently high attendance even in the midst of a bad season.

If you like Freakonomics or Malcolm Gladwell, and you’re also a sports fan, I would highly recommend this book. It may make you look at your favorite sport a little bit differently.