MMO Di-Jest: Exotic Wagering

First a word of introduction. My name is Larry Smith and I will be submitting articles to Metsmerized periodically, perhaps once or twice per week. I have been writing humor articles (or at least they try to be) for a few years, first at Randy Medina’s THE APPLE and more recently at THE REAL DIRTY METS BLOG. I call my articles Di-Jest so that you know that they are all kidding around kinds of things as opposed to the more serious stuff you get from the fine staff of writers that MMO has. I hope you find them at least mildly amusing and welcome comments. I am pretty active on Twitter using the handle @dr4sight. New followers are always welcome.

And now my first submission to Metsmerized:

EXOTIC WAGERING

I don’t have to tell you fellow baseball fans that major league games have become, for the most part, four hour snooze-fests in which each team tries to exhaust the other team’s pitcher. This gets a team deeper and deeper into its always depleted bullpen and forcing pitchers like Scott Rice (now departed, thank goodness) and Buddy Carlyle into games.

Every once in a while there is a break in the inaction and a ball gets hit somewhere and then the real fun starts for a period of up to five seconds.

Betting on baseball has never been as active as it is on football unless your name is Pete Rose.

The NFL lives for wagering and vice versa. And while a lot of the betting is strictly on who will win and by how many points it has also been common to see exotic bets placed, especially on the Super Bowl. Nothing is off limits over there. Want to bet on who will win the coin toss? No problem. You can even get 10,000:1 odds on the coin landing on its edge as it did once in a Twilight Zone episode.

Other football bets include who will score first and whether or not a cheerleader will have a “wardrobe malfunction.”

To punch up baseball, especially Mets games, I think exotic wagering is needed. We may need to tinker with the odds listed below but I’m sure it will give you an idea:

3:1 That Chris Young gets released by August 1st.

2:1 That he is released by September 1st.

20:1 That he hits five more homeruns as a Met

4:1 That Terry Collins will use the squeeze play again this year.

40:1 That he’ll call for a hit-and-run play (or even has a sign for one).

75:1 That the Mets win 90 games this year.

75:1 That the Mets win 90 games next year. OK- we’ll go 50:1 on that if Harvey comes back healthy.

75:1 That the Mets ever win 90 games again while Wilpon-Wilpon-Katz are the owners.

5:1 That one of this group: Jon Niese, Dillon Gee, Jake deGrom will need Tommy John surgery before the end of the 2015 season.

12:1 That all three of the above will need it.

4:1 That Juan Lagares will get a bunt base hit in the current game.

50:1 That he’ll be able to successfully lay down a sacrifice bunt in the current game.