This time of the year, football betting is the rage. It is given some competition by baseball, due mainly to pennant competitions and the Chicago White Sox going AWOL.
Baseball betting in September is usually listless, but this year a few playoff places have still to be settled.
Jimmy Mason, a spokesman for Nine Sportsbook says there’s a lull before the storm, and then the race for the Pennant becomes more intense. The Red Sox and the Yankees will face each other, which will result in the loser going home. In Cleveland White Sox will compete in a 3 game match up. This result will influence the wild card competition also because the Astros hold a 2 and a half game lead over the Phillies with 4 more to play. The Nine Sportsbook spokesman, Jimmy Mason, says that he expects the Red Sox Yankee’s conflict to be equal in size to a major college football game, or a national football league game. The White Sox/Indians, will also see more turnover but will not be equal to the Red Sox Yankee theories.
Orioles’ Jay Gibbons says his team can’t wait for the season to end. There are however, many teams who want to prolong the season. It seems that the White Sox may just make it as a play-off team. Their September hiccup did nothing for them.
The Sox had what seemed to be an unassailable 15 game lead on the 1st August. This became a lead of just 1.5 a couple of days ago. It now shows at 3 with 4 games to play. This compares with the poor performances of the 51 Brooklyn Dodgers, and the 64 Phillies.
In 1951 the Dodgers became infamous by letting the greatest all time August lead slip.
They lost 13 games to what was then the New York Giants. A 16 game victory started the following day, and a 7 to 1 victory compelled a one of play-off. This climaxed as one of the most famous incidents in the American Baseball History. Although the Dodger’s death rattle contributed to the Giant’s August revival, the 64 Phillies threw away a 6 and a half game winning margin with merely 12 to play, and found themselves caught by two teams not one.
The Phillies dropped 10 successive games, thus letting the Cardinals grab the National League above both the Phillies and the Reds.
The Red Sox succeeding in losing a 14 game lead in July to the Yankees in 1978. They lost the pennant in a winner take all tie breaker, which was resolved when Bucky Dent slogged a homer at Fenway Park, so there was’nt a collapse as such. It was a wonderful pennant race in which the Red Sox had to complete the season on an 8 – 0 run to overcome a 3 and half game deficit, and force a tie breaker.
The National League West also played some important games in their run in. The Padres won with merely 79 games with 4 to play, and they might distinguish themselves by becoming the first team to make the play-offs with less than the 500 mark. The Padres reminds one of the 73 mets who were 73-77 with 12 remaining, and still managed to win by 1` and a half games, and a score of 82-79. The Mets beat the
Reds in best of 5, and took Oaklands A’s to 7 games in losing the world series. |