You Can Bet On It

Betting officials, whoever they may be, estimate $6.8 billion will be wagered on next week’s Super Bowl. One guy bet more than $2 million on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to beat Kansas City or at least beat the 3.5-point spread in Kansas City’s favor.

That amount includes both the Las Vegas legal betting and those illegal bets made in the home, at the office or with shady bookies named Slats and Thumbs and Vinny the Vig.

I know I won’t be wagering anything on the game's outcome, although I am rooting for Tampa for personal reasons. I learned my lesson years ago when my former brother-in-law had a shady bookie of his own and laid bets for me on college football games one fall.

I had a system then and could pick college games. That’s what everyone says, but I was pretty analytical about it all. I factored in home and away results, weather conditions at game time, turnover ratios, score by quarters, etc. I was able to get pretty close to actual scores and point spreads.

This was at a time when money was scarce and I was looking for quick cash. Of course, seems like all my life money’s been scarce. (When my wife – who passed away with kidney failure a year after my biggest betting season of 2005 – wanted a couch, I actually offered the furniture store salesman a betting tip on who’d be the national champion in college football that year in hopes of him cutting the price. He turned me down. It was a good choice. I picked Michigan. Wrong. That was the year Texas was proclaimed number one as they beat USC in one of the greatest bowl games ever.)

Each Friday, I’d look at a sheet of spreads the bookie gave my brother-in-law and pick three. I’d never give him money, and that’s where this gets picky. I’d tell him to bet $50 on each game. If I lost, I’d give him the money Monday. If I won, I was supposed to receive the winnings later that week. I stood only to win $150, and when you take out the $5 vig for each game it amounted to $135.  Still, I figured, it was easy money.

The problem was, my brother-in-law would lose a ton on his own games and he’d used my winnings to cover his bets on pro football games on Sundays. There was nothing I could do about it. Was I going to call the cops and report him for stealing money I won illegally?

I think I reached a peak of sports betting obsession on Sept. 17, 2005, when Florida State was playing Boston College. The Seminoles were easily covering the 8-point spread late in the fourth quarter that I had placed my usual $50 bet on.

While the game was going, my wife, active in her church, had people over for a prayer session. I agreed to the meeting, as long as we could leave the game on.  Boston College drove down to Florida State’s three–yard line with only 3 minutes remaining and I got very nervous. If they scored, they’d still lose, but it would make the score 28-24 and Boston College would beat the spread.

My wife’s prayer friends were pretty enthusiastic and would whoop and speak in tongues and all. As the group prayed, and grabbed me into the circle, I watched as Florida State held Boston College on four plays. “Yes,” I would mutter after another Florida State stop. “Amen.”

Then the Seminoles were flagged with defensive holding and Boston College got four more attempts. Each time Florida State stopped them, my cheers grew louder. They stopped them, and Florida State won, 28-17, covering the spread and winning my $50 bet.

“He’s coming around quite spiritually,” one of the prayer members told my wife later.  I think that was when I whooped and thanked Jesus for Florida State’s strong defensive line.

I soon realized, though that you can’t mix sports betting with religion and felt guilty. That, and the fact my brother-in-law kept my winning money, were reasons to quit.

The trifecta came, and I’m not making this up, when the bookie died of a drug overdose. The bettors were worried the police would find his betting sheets and arrest everyone. Since I had no contact with the guy, I was safe, but I worried my brother-in-law would rat me out. It was like living in an episode of Breaking Bad for a week or so.

So, the betting quit.

But I still find myself thinking of that time. Even when I roll APBA baseball games, I sometimes try to predict betting lines and game outcomes. I guess that’s just being a fervent sports fan.

I’ll watch the Super Bowl like the 42 gazillion others, but there won’t be any money on it. I am rooting for Tampa because Kansas City beat my Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV and gave me my first taste of real heartbreak. Old vengeances die hard. I’m still upset over that one.

While the betting world stresses out if the game is close near the end, I’ll just watch the game, drink more Pepsi and be glad I didn’t find another bookie. You can lay odds on that.

A World Without Aaron

The crack of the bats and the sounds of baseballs slapping into worn leather gloves will be more predominant in the mythical Field of Dreams this spring.

They say the field, an actual baseball diamond cut into a cornfield in eastern Iowa and made immortal in the movie “Field of Dreams,” is where the players who have passed away go to play the game for eternity.

Yesterday, the lineup at the Field added one of the greatest players of all time. Henry Aaron died at the age of 86 and although I never met him, it was one of the more sad passings I felt since this onslaught of our baseball heroes leaving us.

In 2020, 110 major leaguers have died, including some of the great ones. In a span of 42 days last year, we lost five Hall of Fame members when Lou Brock, Whitey Ford, Bob Gibson, Joe Morgan and Tom Seaver all passed away. Three other Hall of Famers, Detroit Tigers outfield Al Kaline died last April and Phil Niekro and Dick Allen both died in December.

This year began with the loss of pitchers Don Larsen and Don Sutton and Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda.

And now Aaron is gone. I’ve been out of the news business for nearly two years, but I still have apps on my phone that constantly blurp out breaking news stories. When I saw that Aaron had died when I was at work, I teared up.

Aaron was my favorite player. When I kicked off the 1965 APBA baseball replay last month, I mentioned here a story that I had heard about him when I was a child living in Madison, Wisc. Aaron’s wrists, the legend went, were so strong he could knock baseballs through outfield walls. When my parents would go to Milwaukee, I’d sit in the back of our station wagon, peering at anything that looked like a baseball wall, regardless of it was, to see if there were baseball-sized holes in them.

My family moved to Arkansas on April 8, 1974, the day Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s career home run record. We had left northern Minnesota on April 4 and were trapped in a snowstorm in Minneapolis that afternoon, delaying us a day. I worried that we’d miss seeing Aaron’s historic homer. We made it to a rental house we were staying at in the new town while we waited on the movers to bring the furniture. I turned on the small black and white television there, pivoted the “rabbit ears” antenna and tried to tune in the game from a Springfield, Mo., television station.

In the snowy static that was pretty much fare for television in rural Arkansas in those days, I watched as Al Downing threw to Aaron in the fourth inning and then saw the ball sail into the stands, giving Aaron the home run crown of all time.

There’s a photograph of that homer hanging in the bedroom now. Most people have pictures of Jesus or whoever the president is or family portraits as decoration. I have Aaron’s famed shot. Holly, my wife, is okay with that.

As a side note to that event, I had drawn stars around Aaron’s picture in my 1974 baseball Cord Communications preview book. I traced a line of the trajectory of Aaron’s hit ball and wrote: “715. Home Run King,” with fireworks blasting around it. I had just started eighth grade in the rural Arkansas school in mid-April and a classmate wanted to see the book. I wanted friends, so I handed him the book. He opened it up, saw my drawn tribute to Aaron and then said one of the viler, racist things I’ve heard.

“Are you a n—lover,” he asked me in a mocking sneer. Welcome to Arkansas 

I was shocked. Aaron transcended race, I thought, color didn’t matter. Aaron was just a baseball player, not someone defined by race. I was ignorant, I guess; I didn’t even realize until years later the hatred he faced while pursuing Ruth’s record because he was a black man.

And, another story.  I was in the airport in Atlanta in 2006. I jokingly asked a worker there if she had seen Henry Aaron lately just to say something. She said she had seen him just the week prior. Twenty-one years after he retired, Aaron was still a celebrity in Atlanta and was recognized by someone probably half his age.

As I roll the 1965 baseball replay, I’ve noticed just how many players from this season have passed away in the past months. Morgan leads off for the Reds in 1965. Milwaukee has lost four players this year with Aaron, Niekro, second baseman Frank Bolling and shortstop Dennis Menke.

I understand how this happens, of course. Those of us who saw these players as our heroes are now getting old ourselves. These players are that age when people start dying. Aaron was 86. Ford was a few weeks shy of turning 92 when he passed away. It’s inevitable; death happens. But it’s sad and perhaps it’s a reminder of our own mortality.

As it seems to always happen within the magic of APBA, the next games on the 1965 schedule set to play today were a doubleheader featuring Philadelphia at Milwaukee. Aaron went 0-8 with two strikeouts and the Braves lost both games to drop the team’s record to 7-10. Aaron has only hit one home run so far in those 17 games, but he’s batting .348 with 11 RBIs. It was a bad day statistically for him, but he had bad days in the real game. He'll slug more home runs in my replay, I'm sure.

Those who have died the past year field a formidable team, a Field of Dreams All-Star group if there ever was one with Aaron anchoring the outfield, Morgan at second,  Seaver on the mound and Lasorda in the dugout.

We now live in a world without Henry Aaron and that’s sad. Maybe that’s one reason we’ve played APBA for decades since being introduced to the game as children. When I pick up the APBA dice, I enter a world where he’s still alive and swinging the bat, those strong wrists of his busting holes in outfield walls.

Strikeouts, 1965 Style

Between 1963 and 1968, strikeouts were at a premium in Major League Baseball and my 1965 APBA baseball replay is reflecting that. Obviously, strikeout counts were increased by some of the great pitchers of that era, including Sandy Koufax, Mickey Lolich, Sam McDowell and Juan Marichal.

But pitchers got help.  Former baseball commissioner Ford Frick, who, historians say, was so angered when Roger Maris hit 61 home runs in 1961, thus breaking Frick’s hero Babe Ruth’s record of 60 set in 1927, that he ordered the enlargement of the strike zone in 1963.

In 1961, when Maris beat Ruth’s hallowed record, there were 14,947 strikeouts recorded in the majors. Two years later, after Frick’s enlarged strike zone was enacted, batters missed 18,773 times. In 1965, a total of 19,283 strikeouts were notched. It was a good time to be a pitcher. 

As a result of that, baseball lowered the mound 5 inches following the 1968 season when Carl Yastrzemski won the AL batting title with a record low .301 average, giving batters more of an advantage at the plate. In 1969, there were more strikeouts than the year before – 22,473 – but keep in mind, there were four more teams in the league as well.

All that to say that I’m noticing the huge difference in strikeouts in my 1965 replay as compared to the 1947 season replay I completed in December. One of my APBA friends said 1965 was her favorite season to replay. I generally say whatever season I’m doing is my favorite, but so far, with just under 10 percent of the season completed, I’m finding this very well could be my favorite of all time, too. I’ve completed 11 replays in my 23 years of rolling APBA baseball with seasons in every decade from the 1930s to the 1990s.

There are the players I grew up with in 1965: my two favorites, Henry Aaron and Harmon Killebrew; Willie Mays; Mickey Mantle; the Alou brothers, Felipe, Jesus and Matty; Koufax; the fun-named Mudcat Grant of the Twins; and others.

There’s also the home runs – not too many like there were when I did my first replay of the 1998 season – but enough to enjoy the occasional blast. Frank Howard of the Washington Senators leads the American League at the May 1, 1965, point of my replay with 8 home runs. Those with 5 home runs to lead the National League are Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, Bill White, Joe Torre and Willie Stargell. Great names in a great era.

And there are the pitchers.

Readers of this blog know I keep limited statistics. Home runs, won-lost records and saves are the mainstay. I tallied RBIs for the 1947 season and complete batting averages for only three players. This year, in addition to the big three stats, I’m tracking strikeouts of every pitcher by hand. I used to keep full stats on computers, but I found they always crashed and I’m too computer illiterate to know how to store them on “clouds” and thumb drives.  I know it’s blasphemous to some APBA players to skip full stats, but I enjoy just watching the standings change over the days and compiling the records in the major categories.

(When I played APBA’s basketball game, I kept all stats by hand and a slide rule. The game was ploddingly slow. Doing scoring averages by a slide rule when I was 17 just added to that slowness).

So, here’s what I found when comparing early strikeout stats from 1965 to 1947. In 150 games so far in the 1965 season (I reached #150 this morning when Cincinnati beat the New York Mets, 7-6, on Reds’ pitcher John Tsitouris’ 11 Ks), there have been 2,443 strikeouts. That’s compared to 993 strikeouts in the first 150 games of the 1947 replay I did.

On average, 1965 teams – starters and their relievers - are striking out 16.3 batters per game. Eighteen years earlier, before Frick’s swollen strike zone, pitchers were punching out 6.6 batters each game in 1947. That’s an additional strikeout per inning in 1965.

APBA rates its players based upon their actual statistics for the season. Pitchers earn grades from A to D, much like grading in school, to replicate their ERA for the season. They are also given Xs and Ys to increase strikeout likelihood and Zs for diminishing the number of walks given.

Dodgers’ ace Sandy Koufax, who has an APBA rating of A (XY Z) which is about as good as it gets, has 49 strikeouts in four games to lead the majors. By comparison, it took the 1947 Dodgers, then in Brooklyn, 13 games for all of its pitchers to reach 49 strikeouts.

Other National League strikeout leaders in my replay are Bob Veale of Pittsburgh with 43 and San Francisco hurler Juan Marichal with 40. Al Downing of the New York Yankees, Denny McLain of Detroit and Mel Stottlemyre of the Yanks each has 31 to lead the American League.

The strikeouts also keep scoring down. I’m not a huge fan of high-scoring games. I’d rather see a 2-1 contest than a 14-8 blowout. Cleveland once beat Kansas City, 21-7, in my replay; pitchers combined for a total of 15 strikeouts in that game. But for the most part, there’s a good balance between home runs, scores and strikeouts.

I’m just under 10 percent into the 1965 replay, but the combination of strikeouts, homers and lower scoring games are adding up to making this one of my favorite replays of all time.

Married Life

It was a weird, dismal year and as it came to a close, Holly and I decided to end it on a nice, albeit more weird, note.

We got married on New Year’s Eve. During a rain storm. In a lumber yard. By a justice of the peace who was an obsessive St. Louis Cardinals fan and who was uniting two Chicago Cubs fans. When he learned we were Cubbies, and thus mortal rivals of his team, he joked about not doing the service.

I told you it was weird.

We planned on getting hitched in 2021, but after reviewing 2020, we thought it would bring decent closure to a year wracked with distraught, mayhem, fear and uncertainty. Also, Holly countered, it would provide a nice tax break for all the freelance writing I had done last year. I’m romantic and economically stupid. She’s practical and financially wise. If not made in heaven, it was a match made in a bank statement.

We got the marriage license at 4 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. Since I worked in the courthouse with the prosecuting attorney’s office, the clerks there knew me and it was a quick process. We got home by 5:30 p.m.

Then, we talked. What if we got married that day? I called a justice of the peace who said he’d meet us at 7 p.m. at his place of work, a hardware store and lumber yard just off the interstate that runs through town. The quick response had to be a sign that this was a good plan and at 6:30 p.m., we were headed to the business.

Here’s the back story: I met Holly in September 2015 after “talking” with her on Facebook for a couple of years. She was friends with an APBA player and I met her through him.  She was selling her house just north of Chicago that fall of 2015 and, after the newspaper where I worked told me I needed to go on vacation, I offered to go up there and help her.

She agreed and at 6:03 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 26, Holly got into my car and we were on our first “date” to buy toilet seats. The next evening, we watched for a lunar eclipse that was blocked by a large cloud over Lake Michigan. I was smitten.

I often returned to Chicagoland the following seven months to see her. In June, she sold her house, but her plans to get an apartment in her town didn’t work out and instead she moved to Arkansas with me.

We planned then to get hitched and even got the marriage license. But life stepped in. She made frequent trips back to Libertyville, Ill., to see her mother who was in a nursing home. Holly didn’t want to get married and then be gone half the time. Also, adapting to life in Arkansas and with me was difficult at first.

But we forged on, creating a strong relationship that led to our New Year’s Eve adventure.

The justice ushered us through the hardware store and into his office. Hung on the walls were picture of St. Louis Cardinals teams. He had one of the 1967 team and I mentioned that was the year they beat Boston’s Miracle Team in the World Series. There were team pictures from 1987, 2004 and 2011, other years the Cards made it to the Series. I told him I went to Game 5 in St. Louis when they played the Minnesota Twins in 1987. He said he was at Game 4 in 2004 where the Red Sox swept the Redbirds.

Holly, who has the patience of a saint, began rolling her eyes. Sports talk was delaying our ceremony. I told him I really didn’t like the Red Sox, both for that2004 Series and because my father grew up in New York and was a Yankees fan. Our mutual dislike of Boston’s team salved any rivalry wounds between the Cardinals and Cubs and he began the service.

It was perfect. Tucked in an office in a hardware store and lumber yard, we professed our love. Truthfully, when he asked Holly if she would “take me in lawfully wedded matrimony,” I had a moment of fear, thinking she may say “No,” or in her Illinois’ accent, “Heck, no.”

But she agreed and within about 10 minutes, we were wed.

The justice read a nice prayer and we were official.

Nothing has changed with our wedding. I was devoted to her during the 4.5 years we were not married. I learned then that men are always wrong and women were always right. I learned women’s moods changed for no reason and asking “what’s wrong?” was like stepping on a land mine. I was perfect for marriage.

Nothing changed. But everything changed. I have more Fear of being a good provider. I’ve got five freelance stories due for magazines and newspaper in two weeks; I may have outdone myself in meeting deadlines, but it’s extra pay and that helps.

And this is weird, but I’ve felt a massive peace come over us since we got married. We’re still stressing over not having enough money, which a majority of the country does, but I’m not as crazy about it. That’s not to say being married has dulled my senses. Instead, and here’s the religious part, maybe being blessed has helped. A county deputy clerk mentioned that when I returned to work the following week. “You feel peace, don’t you?” she asked. I was surprised, but told her I did. She understood.

And, friends offered congratulations. Women at work were ecstatic. A detective in our office jokingly gave condolences. He had been through a bad divorce. Another guy friend made a vulgar joke about why women smile when getting married. Another was happy for us, but then brought up his own ugly divorce. I’ve discovered that men talk about their divorces like women talk about their pregnancies. Both are painful, but then when finished, there’s bliss.

One girl, whose known us since the beginning, texted one word upon notification of our wedding.

“Finally,” she wrote.

And, the APBA connection. If not for the game, I’d not have met Holly. Our mutual friend was David Yamada, a game player and the most intelligent Facebook friend I have. Holly abides by my APBA obsession and has even bought me a few seasons. She’s rolled for the 1991 Cubs during my replay of that season and acts interested in my game recounts of the 1965 season I’m now replaying.

It’s weird. I’m married now. But it’s a fitting end to a really weird year.