The Gambling Edition
Sunday Paper (Year 3, Volume XLIV)
Sometimes I wish I could make my living as a professional gambler.
Watch sports all day, make money when teams win, sit around and say things like, "It's not gambling when you know you're going to win."
Then there are other days when I hate the thought of gambling.
I hate the way it feels when you lose a pick..and the accompanying feeling of, if it escalated, "Wow. This could go really bad really fast."
Welcome to the Gambling Edition of the Sunday Paper.
I should start by making this clear: I've never gambled illegally in my life. (Pools are legal, right?) I'm a big pool participant. Love pools. I guess I should add that I'm not 100% sure that every pool I've participated in has been run above board, where the pool runner pays out all the money that went in...But I can say for sure that every pool I've run I've made sure that the contributions are divided out equally.
I should also add that if you have gambled illegally, this is not a diatribe against you. I'm not here to preach...mostly to sympathize. I've been tempted to take this operation a step further. That good feeling when you win some kind of pool or bet - that's a really good feeling. But I can see the slippery slope it can fast become. I have never been more uncomfortable watching a TV character than I was with Ray Romano's 'Joe' on "Men Of A Certain Age", because of his gambling problem. I imagine that was as realistic as it gets...and I could see some of myself in that part of Joe.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately, though, and I've figured out why I should never start down that slope. Here are three reasons why I'll never make a good sports gambler:
- I've mentioned this many times before on the blog: Too often I think with my heart rather than my head. This shows in my picks - I've only recently stopped picking the Mets to do well every year, and I've seen my baseball picks increase in success as a result. The Jets are still a contender, which clouds my head - my heart won't let me pick against them. The results speak for themselves. That affects my picks in the pools too - my heart can convince my head almost every week that the Jets will cover any spread - even if they lose as underdogs. How can they lose by more than three points?! It's a weakness, I know, and it's probably cost me some pool winnings. But it's also a big part of what prevents me from putting down big money with a bookie.
- Another thing that makes me a failure as a gambler is that I count my chickens before they're hatched. Every time. When the Brewers lost in the NLCS a couple of weeks ago, I didn't finally lose the $20 I bet on them back in January. I lost $440. $440 that I never won but that I started thinking about how I was going to parlay into $1000 on a trip to Las Vegas after the World Series ended. Same with my NFL Survivor pool, when the Giants lost to the Seahawks in Week 5. I was going to win that $610, man. It makes the loss even more painful when you start thinking about the possible windfall. I still look at the NFL season, with all of its pools, as a money-making operation. But here's the thing - I can't remember the last time I won any money in a football pool.
- Finally, I already have some obsessive tendencies. I count everything. I read every street sign I see. License plates, too. I could see this being a big-time flaw if I gambled. I lost $100? OK, I'll bet another $100 to get that $100 back. It would quickly spiral into a lost house. I have a patient wife. She looks the other way on many of my, shall we call them...eccentricities. I have a feeling this would be the thing that finally made her see my flaws.
I'll spend this NFL Sunday just as I do every other Sunday in the NFL season: Watching my picks develop throughout the afternoon, thinking until I lose one that this will be the week I go without a loss. This week presents me with a Sunday that provides me with a better chance than most. There's no way I'll pick the Jets game wrong. After all, it's their bye week.
*With the Cowboys blowing their chance at beating the Patriots before New England's bye, there aren't many losses left on the Patriots' schedule. The Steelers are bound to give them a run Sunday afternoon in Pittsburgh. I'm a big fan of 'win your games so you don't have to worry about the other teams you're chasing'...but it sure would help the Jets if other teams answer Rex Ryan's plea for 'someone else to beat New England'. Especially before the Jets get their next crack at them in a couple of weeks.
*I don't quite know how I feel about the St. Louis Cardinals as World Series champions. They definitely earned their spot in the post-season - I won't take that away from them. (Sure, the Braves collapsed - but it's only a collapse if another team takes advantage. The Cardinals did.) But I went to sleep Thursday night with the Rangers leading Game 6 late, because the Cardinals had already made two damaging errors - a dropped pop-up in the outfield, and another at third base. Those are Little League (or Mets) mistakes - not mistakes that a team comes back from to win the World Series. Matt Holliday and David Freese should have been goats - not World Series champs....and MVP. (And I'm certainly less-than-thrilled with how the Cardinals handled their press [un]availabilities following Game 4.) I commend the Cardinals for finding a way to win despite their mistakes - but teams like that shouldn't win. I know. I'm a Mets fan.
*I know hindsight is 20/20, but I think Ron Washington lost the Series in the fifth inning of Game 6. With a 4-3 lead, 2 outs, bases loaded, he left his pitcher in to hit with a chance to break the game open. With the way the series had been going, with starters not going deep into games, with a chance to play to end the season in that game...I would have pinch hit and tried to finish off the Cardinals in that inning. I know it's easy to say now, but that's what I thought at the time. The Rangers were still in a position to win late, so I suppose it shouldn't matter...but it may have been a blowout by that point had Washington made a different decision earlier.
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