On Sports Betting: Dogs Reward Savvy Bettors as MLB Season Gets Underway

By Daniel Behringer for LVSportsBiz.com

We were ready for the first pitch.

It was 4:08 p.m. on a weekday, and we were camped in front of ESPN for Major League Baseball’s opening day game between the New York Yankees and the Washington Nationals.

ESPN telecast brilliant pictures. A sea of empty seats. Batted balls caroming off the empty stands and bouncing high. Close-ups of Rawlings baseballs. And the forbidding gray clouds looming over Nationals Park along the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C.

Entertaining baseball prevailed for several innings. Then the gray clouds opened up and spattered TV camera lenses. Seconds later the grounds crew bolted into action.

A line from Bull Durham came to mind.

“Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.”

In this case, it rained. Hard. In buckets.

About two hours after the deluge began, the game was official. The Yankees, who closed as high as -170 favorites, won the rain-shortened game, 4-1. Yankees bettors cashed their tickets. But gamblers playing the run line or the total at 7.5 had their bets voided and their wagers refunded.

Nationals starter Max Scherzer, who struck out 11 but gave up all of New York’s runs, looked at the sunny side. He told The Associated Press, in a quote worthy of Bull Durham’s “Crash” Davis or Ebby Calvin “Nuke” Laroosh, “I’d rather be playing baseball than not. … All the things we can get negative about and cry about, I’m just not going to do it.”

There was a later opening day game, too. The Los Angeles Dodgers, an almost prohibitive -300 favorite, defeated the San Francisco Giants, 8-1. Under bettors cashed when the total came in under 9.5.

Baseball-starved fanatics woke up to a full slate of MLB game on Friday with many favorites prevailing. 

But on Saturday, ‘dogs reared their heads in classic fashion. The Kansas City Royals, +230, beat the Cleveland Indians, 3-2. The Detroit Tigers, +230, beat the Cincinnati Reds, 6-4. The Nationals, +200, beat the Yankees, 9-2. The Giants, +320, beat the Dodgers, 5-4. If you were bold enough to parlay those four teams for a black chip, your ticket paid $13,205.60. That’s more than enough to buy a few rounds when Nevada bars eventually reopen.

Very late on Sunday evening, the Giants again finished off the Dodgers, 3-1, and cashed as +270 ‘dogs.

Even if the shortened MLB season is only 60 games, it’s uplifting to see pictures of baseball’s neatly mowed grass, blue skies and players in dirt-smudged uniforms.

Which takes us back to Bull Durham and a thought from Annie Savoy:

“Walt Whitman once said, ‘I see great things in baseball. It’s our game, the American game. It will repair our losses and be a blessing to us.’ You could look it up.”

Elsewhere:

— In the UFC’s Fight Island 3 from Abu Dhabi, U.A.E., on Saturday, Robert Whittaker defeated Darren Till by unanimous decision in the main event. Both fighters had opened around -110 for the middleweight match, but Whittaker was -135 by fight time, according to Vegas Insider.

Till told MMA Junkie and other reporters that his knee blew out early in the fight and he’s hopeful for a rematch.

“I couldn’t do it the whole fight. I just had to fight. I hid the pain. I don’t think he recognized,” he said.

The UFC returns to its Apex facility southwest Las Vegas on Saturday night. In the main event Edmen Shahbazyan is favored over Derek Brunson. Shahbazyan is -275 and Brunson +225. In the co-main event, Joanne Calderwood will meet in Jennifer Maia in a women’s flyweight event. Calderwood is -175 and Maia is +150.

— The Las Vegas Aces lost their season opener to the Chicago Sky on Sunday, 88-86. The Sky scored the final 11 points and Allie Quigley made a 3-pointer with 14.7 seconds left in the game for the win.

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