In 2002, legendary baseball statistician Bill James was hired by the Boston Red Sox to serve as the team's Senior Baseball Operations Advisor. "My role," he explained, "is that I tell them what I think whenever they ask me to, and that I tell them what I think whenever I can't keep my mouth shut."

[Among the findings in his first report? Thanks to the asymmetries of Fenway Park, Red Sox teams have historically tended to succeed in proportion to the number of left-handed hitters in their lineup (contrary to conventional wisdom, which holds that Fenway's Green Monster -- a giant wall just three hundred feet down the left-field line -- favors right-handed hitters.) The Sox promptly restocked their roster.]