Knuckleballs – "like butterflies with hiccups"

“WHY Are You Doing This?”

Posted on 29 June, 2023 by Jim Crikket

Welcome to Knuckleballs.

I was going to say “Welcome back to Knuckleballs,” but let’s be honest… many of you weren’t even aware this blog existed.

First two books are available. Book Three should be published July 8. Available in paperback and Kindle through Amazon.com

It’s been going on three years since I (that’s me up there on the byline… “Jim Crikket”) posted an article here. In 2020, I used this site as a vehicle for sharing my interest in sports betting, and to provide updates on the surgery I underwent that resulted in a plate and a couple of screws being put in my left foot.

Before that, my co-founders and I wrote primarily about Minnesota Twins baseball here. Then we got lives.

This article isn’t about any of that, however.

This is about my new career. Or new avocation. Whatever it is.

I have become an author. In fact, given that I published my first novel through Amazon in April and I already have a second book available and a third that should be published in less than two weeks, I think I can rightfully claim to be a prolific author.

Based on early sales volumes, however, James Patterson has little to be concerned about with regard to losing market share to S.D. Buhr.

That’s okay.

So… you may be wondering why I decided to do this, if not to make money.

It’s a fair question. And it’s not that I’d mind generating a little income from this venture. It’s not inexpensive to self-publish books, so please know I appreciate everyone who’s supported me by buying my books. I genuinely want the books to be read. I’d love to get them into some libraries, as difficult as that can be to accomplish for an independent author.

But I didn’t start doing this to make millions of dollars (although I’ll answer the phone if Netflix ever calls). In fact, at the onset of this project, I honestly never intended to publish any of what I was writing.

Remember 2020? It sucked.

For me, the sucking started in 2019 when I broke my foot while I was hanging out at the condo in Fort Myers between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The resulting surgery already had me laid up for several weeks BEFORE we all got virtually locked down for COVID the following March.

Somewhere during that stretch–I don’t recall exactly when–I decided to start writing a story. The purpose, frankly, was to keep my mind from turning to mush.

I had enjoyed a retirement life that involved family, friends, golfing, travel, attending minor league baseball games… and writing about minor league baseball.

Then, just like that, spending time with anyone outside the immediate family you lived with was discouraged, for everyone’s safety. Travel was out of the question. Golfing was okay, to degree, although I certainly did much less of it. And after professional baseball shut down spring training that March, minor league baseball literally ceased to exist.

So, with no minor league baseball to write about, I decided to write about something else. I just wasn’t sure what that should be. They say you should write what you know. Great advice, unless you’re someone who really doesn’t know enough about anything to write about it.

But I decided there was one thing I did know about. I knew what it was like to grow up a high school coach’s son. I knew what it was like to be a teenager in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I knew what it was like to be uprooted by my parents from my southern Minnesota hometown and dragged kicking and screaming to a smaller town in northcentral Iowa.

So that’s what I began to write about.

For a short time, I started writing about my actual life in Albert Lea, Minnesota, back in 1968. About half an hour later, however, I got bored with that. I realized my life simply wasn’t all that exciting. I was just a kid, like every other kid in the neighborhood.

That’s when I decided to make stuff up. That was a HUGE decision. It made writing a lot more fun and, I truly believe, it made the story a lot better!

Over the following several months, I wrote. I wrote about this poor kid having to move away from his friends (including his first crush) and into this strange world in his new Iowa hometown.

Naturally, the early life of the protagonist (we’ll call him “Du” because that’s what I called him in the book) parallels the author’s life (that’s me, by the way) in some ways. But not many. Honest… I had to make 99% of the story up because my reality (while I enjoyed the heck out of it when I was living it) just wasn’t the stuff that makes for a good novel.

I wrote what I felt was a nice story, ending with the first date between Du and one of the girls in his junior high school class.

It took maybe three months, but it was done.

I didn’t know what to do next. I never intended to show it to anyone. I didn’t even tell my family I was writing it!

But I kind of liked the characters I had created. Some–not all–of them were based VERY loosely on people I knew back then. If you happened to know my parents, you very well might recognize some of my real parents’ mannerisms, language, etc. But the parents I created were not my real parents. They were almost caricatures of my real parents. And, frankly, not particularly flattering caricatures in some ways.

The same might be true of some of the friends I grew up with. Some of the characters in the book share mannerisms, family backgrounds, hair color, etc., with people I grew up with. But the characters themselves… what they do and what they say… that’s all fiction.

Not to mention, I discovered quickly that even if I had wanted to write a character for every friend I grew up with back then, there wasn’t room. There may have been times when I was a teenager that it didn’t feel like I had many friends, but when I started writing, I figured out very quickly that there would only be room for a limited number to play significant roles in the book. So that’s when I learned, first hand, about consolidating characters.

In my real life, the kids I played baseball and basketball with were not necessarily the same kids with whom I did all the other crazy stuff I did back then. But for the sake of keeping things from becoming unwieldly, in Du’s world, the guys he played basketball with were the same guys he raced cars and rode motorcycles with.

What’s that you say? Thirteen year olds don’t race cars and ride motorcycles? I’m glad you brought that up.

So, after I finished the story and STILL had no minor league baseball to go see, I decided to just keep writing.

First, I wrote about what happens to Du on the day AFTER that first date. And the week after that. And the month after that. And the year after that.

It was early during this period that I made a decision. I’m not sure I would make the same choice if I were starting over today. I not only tried to make sure I never used any real names of anyone in my life (for obvious reasons), I also changed the names of the towns where most of the story takes place.

Why do that? Was I ashamed of having grown up in Albert Lea, Minnesota, and Webster City, Iowa? Not for a moment. I cherish the memories I have of living in both towns, and the friends I had in each.

But with this being a work of fiction, there were instances where I needed (or at least strongly desired) a feature in a park, or at a lake, or in a school, that did not actually exist in the towns I grew up in. So, I exercised literary license and changed the names of some of the towns.

So my friends from Webster City can’t read something and say, “Hey, we didn’t have that store or anything like it when we were growing up there.”

I also was toying with the idea of Du, once he was in high school, making frequent trips back to his old hometown in Minnesota to visit friends, so I sort of “relocated” the fictional version of my real hometown of Webster City to a geographical location much closer to the Iowa/Minnesota border.

I didn’t end up doing anything much with that kind of story arc, however, so I probably wouldn’t have had to do that. I could have gone back and “moved” the town closer to where Webster City is located, but by then I was a year (and a million words) into this deal and the thought of trying to do that gave me a headache.

Plus… like I’ve said… NOBODY was ever going to read any of this anyway! So who cares where the towns are located or what they’re called? I KNOW. Nobody else will need to.

Anyway, by the time we were coming out of that COVID lockdown, our boy Du and his friends had graduated from high school… and I had a “book” that had more words than War and Peace. I’m serious. I looked it up.

Did I let that stop me? Hell no. I kept writing until Du and some of his friends had managed to graduate from college, get married, and have a couple of pretty cool careers. Now we were up to twice the number of words in War and Peace.

But at one point, I encountered a problem.

There came a point in the story… I think when Du was in college… where I thought it would be really helpful to insert a chapter from the perspective of one of the women in his life at that time. When I was done writing that, I liked it. So I wrote another similar chapter to insert at another point where I felt it was helpful.

Now that cat was out of the bag, Pandor’s Box had been opened, and all those other similar cliches you want to try to avoid using when you write, but end up using anyway.

But I went back to the beginning. And I inserted chapters from the perspectives of the girls he went to junior high with. And the girls he went to high school with. And the women he met during his college years. And his wife.

That, my friends, is how you take a story that’s already at War and Peace levels and jack it up to three times that size.

It’s also how you turn a three-month project into a three-year (and counting) project.

But for a long time, the length simply didn’t matter to me. I was just writing it because I enjoyed doing it. I became very attached to almost all of the characters. It took almost no time at all for them to completely escape any remote resemblance to any of my friends who may have at least partially inspired them. They all had lives and personalities and hopes and fears and strengths and weaknesses of their own.

And that particularly includes Du, the protagonist. He was never me. Not really. But he became his own man, long before he reached manhood. He tried. He failed. He made mistakes. He was hurt. He hurt others, including those he loved. He was a product of the environment he grew up in.

Speaking of that environment, as I continued to write, something I really enjoyed doing was incorporating references to iconic moments in history from that era, and references to our music in particular. I would hear a classic song and think, “Oh, I know a great spot where I can reference that song in the story!”

Often, those thoughts would come to me in the middle of the night, and I’d have no recollection of them the next day, but occasionally I’d manage to remember to plug it in where I wanted it.

Anyway, once I had the story “done” (I put that word in quote marks because I know this story won’t be done until I’ve published the final book), I began to have some thoughts about sharing it. As soon as I started down that path, I had a problem.

It was probably too long.

Unless…

That’s how “The Du-Over” went from an insanely long book to being the first book in the “Growing Up Barely Boomer” SERIES of novels.

Of course, that meant I had to go back and chop the story into book-sized units, with each book having an ending that at least made SOME sense. I’m not big on cliffhangers, so I tried to minimize those. But you also want to leave the reader with enough interest to wonder about what happens next.

So, that’s where we are today. It’s also why I can kick out a new book every couple of months instead of maybe one or two a year like a normal author. The story’s over (for me). I know what happens to every character from junior high to adulthood. Sure, I could (and certainly will) make some additional changes. But the time involved between each book is mostly a factor of getting them into a final version I’m happy with, having my wife read through it, then getting it in the hands of my editors, who take what I write and turn it into something readable.

Here’s the thing, though… and I’m sure you’ll be devastated by this… I’m not sure I’m going to actually publish all of the books.

I’ve made a commitment to myself to publish nine books. That gets Du and the rest of these crazy kids through their high school graduation. Maybe that’s enough. Maybe it’s enough that I know what happens to them after that. I’m not sure.

After all, I’m pretty sure that even those friends I grew up with who have been very supportive and kind in their assessments of the first couple of books in the series probably took one look at the picture of nine book covers and said something along the lines of, “That idiot is writing NINE books? I was all for one of them. That was nice. But NINE? Listen, just because I dated that loser for a couple of months in high school, I’m not going to buy NINE freaking books! After all, I dumped his ass for a reason back then. I didn’t want to keep listening to him talk. I sure don’t want to turn around and read a million words he’s written!”

And I get that.

But I’m going to publish them anyway. And years from now (hopefully) when I’m no longer around, there will be at least nine books out there somewhere that my grandkids can point to and say, “My grandpa wrote that story.”

I can happily live with that.

And now you know why I’m doing this.

Steve

P.S. If you’re feeling like doing some reading, you can find my Amazon author’s page here. You can also keep abreast of news concerning my writing on Facebook here. I’m hoping to make appearances at a few more author events/shows this summer and fall, and I’ll be announcing those appearances on that Facebook page. If you’re anywhere near my old stomping grounds in Webster City, Iowa, put September 14 on your calendar. I’m scheduled to make an appearance at Kendall Young Library at 6 p.m. that evening.

Bet On It! – The MLB Postseason

Posted on 28 September, 2020 by Jim Crikket

Whew! We made it!

I know I can’t be the only person who wouldn’t have bet much money a couple of months ago on the chances of MLB even having a Postseason in 2020. It looked pretty bleak when the Marlins and Cardinals started things off with a bunch of postponed games.

But here we are. The American League starts their first round on Tuesday and the National League gets going on Wednesday.

And, yes, the Minnesota Twins will be participating in this rather strange endeavor, having squeaked through with a second consecutive American League Central Division championship.

When I initially placed a bet on the Twins to win their Division, back in January, I bet in moderation. After all, back then, we still expected the season to be 162 games long and we all know anything can happen over the course of a marathon-like MLB regular season.

But when the season was officially shortened to 60 games, I was feeling very optimistic about the Twins’ chances in the AL Central. So much so that I put a whole bunch more money on them to win the Division. How much? Well, I won’t go into those details, but it was the largest single bet I’ve placed on any event since legalized gambling came to Iowa.

Suffice to say, I was not pleased with a week left in the schedule. Thankfully, the White Sox totally tanked and the Twins won just enough down the stretch for me to cash in.

But that’s all in the rearview mirror now. It’s time to look at the odds that William Hill and Elite Sportsbook have issued for the 16 teams still playing baseball this week.

Once again, I’m surprised how these two organizations diverge on some of these odds. There are some interesting opportunities, for sure, but first let’s check in on the Twins’ odds, where the two sportsbooks are almost in lockstep with one another.

Both William Hill and Elite have the Twins at 10-1 odds to win the World Series and they differ very little on their chances to win the American League Pennant. Hill is at +425 and Elite at an even 4-1.

At William Hill, you can also put money on the outcome of the Twins’ best-of-three series with the Astros (boooooo). But the Twins are such heavy favorites (that felt as weird to type as it does to read, trust me) at -170 that it hardly seems worth it.

Bottom line, putting a little money on the Twins to win it all at 10-1 seems worthwhile. After all, if there’s anything that would feel better than the Twins winning the World Series, it would have to be the Twins winning the World Series AND cashing in a nice fat payday from a sportsbook.

But once we’ve got that money down, where else should we turn?

Forget the Dodgers. I don’t care how good a team is supposed to be, if the best I can do is get 3-1 at Elite (+275 at WmHill) to win a playoff involving 15 other teams, I’m going to pass.

The Rays are getting just 6-1 odds at Elite to win the World Series, but you can get 10-1 on WmHill. So you might ask yourself if you like Tampa’s chances as much as (or even more than?) you do the Twins’.

No? So, what about the Yankees? Yes, at WmHill you can get that same 10-1 line on the Yankees to win the Series (Elite offers only 7-1).

Elite is also offering 10-1 on the White Sox, but you can get 14-1 if you move over to William Hill.

Thinking 10-1 is small potatoes and want a bigger bang for your buck? We can do that.

Let’s start by assuming you’re not interested in Miami (40-1 on WmHill, 33-1 on Elite) and probably only marginally more tempted by Milwaukee (40-1 on Elite, 25-1 on WmHill) and Toronto (nay, Buffalo) which sits at 30-1 at both books.

Could you be teased into a Cubs bet at 15-1 on William Hill (12-1 on Elite)? Maybe you like the Cubs to win the NL at +750 on WmHill (+550 on Elite)?

The Padres have been a trendy favorite and you can get 4-1 at Elite (+350 WmHill) for a San Diego NL Pennant or go crazy and bet them to win the whole shooting match and get 9-1 at Elite (7-1 at WmHill).

Here’s one that has piqued my interest, though.

Didn’t the Reds look to you like they could be capable of doing some damage? And the Twins didn’t even go up against their best arm!

We can get 9-1 at Elite on the Reds to win the National League (+850 at WmHill) and a whopping 22-1 at Elite to win the World Series (17-1 at WmHill).

Did anyone who watched that Twins/Reds series really come away from it thinking the Twins are better than twice as likely to win it all than the team that took two out of three from them?

Just for comparison, Cleveland and Houston both carry 20-1 odds to win the World Series.

And Cincinnati got a pretty good draw in that NL bracket, too. They’d only have to face one or the other of the NL favorites, since they’re in the opposite bracket from the Dodgers and Padres (yes, technically, Atlanta is the number 2 seed, but both bookmakers like San Diego more).

I like the Reds in their matchup with Atlanta and then they probably get the Cubs (though I’m not THAT sure the Cubs couldn’t find a way to drop a couple of games to Miami).

So, that’s where I’m landing. Obviously, I have to put some money on the Twins to win it all so I REALLY have something to celebrate when Maeda shuts down his former team to claim the top prize.

But I’m also going to take a little flyer on the Reds. Clearly could be a combination of “recency bias” and steep odds, but heck, I’ve put money on stuff with less logic behind it.

Let’s get this party started!

Bet On It! Part 5 – Opening Day Edition

Posted on 23 July, 2020 by Jim Crikket

(NOTE: In this “Bet On It” series of posts, I refer regularly to the two online sportsbook services to which I subscribe legally as a resident of the state of Iowa. If you’re interested in checking out these services for yourself, you can do so by clicking William Hill and/or Elite Sportsbook.)

With Opening Day of the 2020 Major League Baseball season now upon us, I thought I would take a quick peek at what, if any, adjustments the sportsbooks I subscribe to have made compared to those I posted in Part 4 of this “Bet On It!” series earlier in July, as teams were making their way back into their abbreviated summer camps.

It turns out, however, that my fellow betting subscribers have given the oddsmakers at William Hill and Elite Sportsbook very little reason to make adjustments to their MLB season odds.

I was pleased to see that William Hill has again begun taking bets on the Division races and even happier to see that they’ve adjusted their line for the favored Twins, compared to what they were offering back in March when spring training was suspended. The Twins’ line is now at -140, which means you have to bet $140 to win $100 on a Twins Central Division championship.

That may not sound great, but William Hill hadn’t offered better than -160 since I started checking in January and still held the line at -170 in mid March. I really like the Twins’ chances in a 60-game sprint so I went ahead and put a little money on the -140 line… all while cursing myself for only putting $50 on the even money 1-1 line that Elite was offering as recently as the end of January. (Elite has not, that I’ve noticed, offered Divisional Championship lines since MLB announced they’d be resuming the season.)

William Hill’s dampened enthusiasm for the Twins is not reflected, however, in their odds on our guys winning the American League Pennant. In fact, those odds at William Hill have dropped from 7-1 when summer camps opened to 6-1 currently. That matches Elite’s current line.

Neither book has changed their outlook on the Twins winning it all. The Twins remain at 16-1 and 15-1 at William Hill and Elite, respectively.

As for the odds for all of the other favorites we’ve been following in this series, both books have remained unchanged on their odds for teams like the Yankees, Dodgers and Astros.

If you’re one of those poor sick souls who follow the Cubs closely, though, there’s been a little movement in the past few weeks.

William Hill has moved their odds on the Cubs winning the National League Pennant from 10-1 to 12-1 currently. Elite is unconvinced, however, leaving their line at 8-1. So if you’ve been looking for an opportunity to throw your money away on the Cubbies, now might be the time to do it. I haven’t noticed 12-1 being offered since the end of January.

Interestingly, the opposite is happening if you’re looking to bet on the Cubs to win the World Series. Elite has moved from 18-1 down to 15-1 on a Cubs championship. Not that it really should matter, given that you’ll want to be taking William Hill up on their unchanged 20-1 line, anyway, should you be in the market for this bet.

Finally, William Hill has added one additional interesting option – betting on which player will lead MLB in Runs + Home Runs. (At least that’s what I think “MOST RS HR’S” means, I’m still kinda new at some of this. If that’s not correct, oh well.) Mike Trout is the odds-on favorite at 12-1 odds, but I couldn’t resist putting $10 on the “Bringer Of Rain.” If Josh Donaldson comes through for me (and, of course, the Twins) over the next couple of months, I’ll make a cool $800 on that bet.

Make it rain, baby!

Bet On It! Part 4

Posted on 4 July, 2020 by Jim Crikket

When I posted Part 3 of this “Bet On It!” series back on March 8, it’s unlikely any of us could have foreseen that four months later we still wouldn’t have seen Major League Baseball’s Opening Day.

Within just a couple of weeks from the time that article was posted, pretty much all MLB bets had been taken off the board at the sportsbooks.

Now, as we try to celebrate our nation’s birthday, the two books that I’m a member of have begun to post some MLB baseball action, though neither William Hill nor Elite Sportsbook have a full range of options available yet.

There are enough, however, that it’s worth taking a fresh look at how the bookies are feeling about which teams are most likely to emerge with trophy hardware this season and, in particular, how they’re feeling about the Minnesota Twins.

To review, William Hill had the Twins at 12-1 odds to win the American League pennant and 22-1 to win the World Series before the club signed Josh Donaldson. After adding the slugger, betters at both William Hill and Elite have pushed those odds southward, to the point where, in early March, William Hill had the Twins at 7-1 to win the AL and 14-1 to win the Series. Elite was a little less enthusiastic about the Twins’ chances, setting their odds at 8-1 (AL) and 20-1 (WS) in March.

While William Hill has maintained their 7-1 line for the Twins to win the AL, their odds on winning the Series bounced back up to the 16-1 level they were at in mid-February.

Elite, meanwhile, is liking the Twins more than they did in March, rather than less. They now offer just 6-1 odds on a Twins pennant and 15-1 odds on a WS trophy.

Only William Hill has re-opened betting on team wins, setting the over/under at 35 wins for the Twins. Given the uncertainty of just how many of the scheduled 60 games will actually get played, I think I’ll leave that number alone.

Interestingly, though, William Hill puts the line at 33.5 wins for Cleveland and maybe even more interestingly, 32.5 wins for the White Sox. That seems high for Chicago, but I suppose it reflects an optimism based on them getting to play a significant percentage of their games against Detroit and Kansas City (not to mention the Pirates). Still, I’m going to have to consider putting some money on the under there.

Here’s something I’m still trying to figure out, though. The futures bets I placed during the offseason at Elite are still active, while those I booked at William Hill no longer show up in my account.

On Elite, I booked the Twins to win the AL Central back when I could still get even 1-1 odds and took a flyer on the Angels to win it all at 35-1 odds. But I also booked the Twins to win the AL at 11-1 and to win the Series at 22-1 on William Hill and those bets are nowhere to be found.

I’ve started combing through communications from William Hill concerning how they were going to treat MLB bets and all I’ve seen is that they would void bets on cancelled events (and I can appreciate them cancelling bets on team wins), but other futures bets would remain alive as long as a winner is eventually determined. So, yeah, I’d love to still have those 11-1/22-1 bets in play.

Neither of my sportsbooks appear to be offering bets on MLB Division winners at this point and the only prop bet I found featuring individual players was at Elite, where we can put some money on who we think will be the MLB home run king.

Mike Trout and Pete Alonso are listed at 8-1, while Christian Yelich and Cody Bellinger are at 10-1. We can also get 10- on “the field” and that seems to be a choice worth considering, to me.

Miguel Sano, at 20-1, is the sole Twins slugger among the 25 players listed. Think I’ll pass on that, thanks.

Revisiting a few of the other contenders, it doesn’t look like either William Hill or Elite have significantly changed their views on the MLB big dogs.

The Dodgers have overtaken the Yankees (barely) as the odds-on favorite to be the World Series Champion. The Dodgers are at +325 and the Yankees at +350 on William Hill. Both teams sit at 7-2 on Elite.

The Astros have tumbled a bit, though, on both sites. The two books have always viewed Houston’s chances very differently. In March, Wm Hill had them at 9-1, while Elite was more optimistic at 5-1. Now, William Hill has them posted at 12-1 and Elite at 6-1. I have to admit, if it didn’t mean having to potentially find myself rooting for the Astros, that 12-1 offering would be tough to pass up.

There’s a lot of talk about how the 60-game season could open the door for mediocre teams to get hot, qualify for the postseason and then potentially knock off one or two better teams to make a run toward the World Series.

So, maybe we should look for decent value bets along those lines. I like my bet on the Angels at 35-1 to win it all (if Trout decides to play, anyway), but are there other options, too?

As much as I’d love to see it happen, it’s hard for me to imagine anyone in the AL East finishing above the Yankees. The Red Sox are still sitting at a relatively inviting 17-1 to win the AL pennant, but they’d not only have to get hot enough to finish ahead of New York, but also top a pretty strong Tampa Bay team.

I could see the Angels or Athletics topping the Astros in the AL West, but I already have money on Los Angeles. Elite is offering 12-1 on Oakland winning the pennant, though, so that’s at least worth considering.

Forget the AL Central. The White Sox are at 12-1 on both sites, but I just don’t see them topping both Cleveland and Minnesota and then ALSO staying hot enough to nail down a pennant. They’re at least a year from putting that kind of run together.

In the National League, the Braves and Nationals will be tough, of course, but 10-1 on the Mets to win the NL pennant is worth thinking about, anyway. If you’re feeling adventurous, William Hill is giving you 15-1 on the Phillies, but that probably has something to do with having to fight through a gauntlet in that division (and their cross-league competition in the AL East), just to get to the postseason.

Like the Yankees in the AL East, the Dodgers in the NL West make it almost pointless to consider one of their Divisional rivals, but if you could hit on the Padres (20-1) or D’Backs (25-1) winning the NL pennant, the payoff would be healthy.

That leaves the NL Central and there’s perhaps at least one interesting option there. I don’t see an obvious dominant team (the two books can’t even agree on whether the Cubs or Cardinals are more likely to win the NL), so it wouldn’t be beyond reason to imagine the Reds or Brewers riding a hot streak or two.

Both teams are listed at 15-1 on Elite and either might be an option at that number. But over at William Hill, things get more interesting. They only give you 10-1 on the Reds, but they offer 20-1 on Milwaukee. That’s tempting.

That’s enough for today, I guess. I don’t know whether we’ll actually see MLB play games this summer and, honestly, I’m still not 100% convinced they should be playing.

But that won’t keep me from keeping an eye on the betting lines.

A Shortened MLB Season? Bring It On!

Posted on 2 July, 2020 by Jim Crikket

It may be because I’ve spent years enjoying Class A Midwest League baseball, which routinely splits its season into two halves with every team’s record resetting to 0-0 by mid-to-late June, but I find myself embracing the plans for big leaguers to sprint through a 60-game Major League season in 2020.

I am not only embracing it, I’m excited about it!

In fact, the only thing tempering my enthusiasm is the concern we all (I would hope) have about potential COVID-related health issues for players, coaches and other people necessary to field teams and put on the games. I’m an unapologetic, mask-wearing believer in just how serious this pandemic is, and I’m concerned that we’re all moving way too fast to re-open everything.

I wasn’t in charge of deciding to try to have some kind of MLB season and if I had been, I’m not sure we all wouldn’t be throwing in the towel on 2020 and crossing our fingers while we hope to have some sort of normal 2021. But since the owners and players mutually decided to give this a shot, I’m trying to focus on what “is,” rather than what I personally think “should be.”

And what “is” is a season unlike anything any of us has ever seen Major League Baseball do. The old cliché is that baseball (at least at the Major League level) is a marathon, not a sprint. But when you slice 102 games off the normal 162-game schedule, that cliché goes into the scrapheap. Make no mistake, the 2020 MLB regular season will at least seem like a sprint to many of the people involved.

A lot of people, including some fans and writers I respect, maintain that a 60-game season is a farce – that mediocre teams (or worse) will find a way to slip into the postseason at the expense of good teams who simply have the misfortune of suffering too many losing streaks caused by injuries, illnesses and bad hops. And those people are right.

While it’s not like mediocre teams have never unexpectedly found themselves in the postseason or even winning a World Series (anyone remember the 1987 Twins?), the likelihood of pretenders crashing the postseason party at the expense of contenders this year is admitedly greater.

But I have an answer for that. I simply do not care.

I’ve watched the Cedar Rapids Kernels play what is essentially a pair of 70-game seasons every summer for years. And guess what… yes, getting hot or turning cold at some point makes a ton of difference, but I’ve never heard a single fan complain about it.

The minor leagues that play split seasons do so for a couple of reasons. First, rosters (particularly at the lower MiLB levels) see significant turnover as parent clubs move players up and down (and out of) the organizational ladder throughout the season, so the rosters teams finish the season with seldom closely resemble the Opening Day rosters.

But just as important (at least to the MiLB affiliate front offices trying to at least break even financially), it makes it more likely that every team in the league will at least be in contention for a postseason spot during much (if not most) of July and August, perhaps the two most important months in MiLB baseball in terms of retaining fan engagement.

So, in this bizarre summer, Major League Baseball is going to take a page out of the MiLB playbook and, as a result, fans in Kansas City and Detroit will be tuning in to watch their teams play ball in August in greater numbers than would have been likely in a normal season.

I fail to understand why that’s a bad thing. Is it because it’s possible the Yankees or Dodgers might have a bad stretch and not make the postseason? Cry me a river.

I realize that the team I’m a fan of, the Minnesota Twins, are now one of those teams that were built to compete over 162 games. They arguably have more depth than almost any other team in the American League and that advantage could be negated by the shortened regular season (though that pesky pandemic thing could certainly still make depth a critical factor).

If the Twins have one too many rough stretches and find themselves on the outside of the postseason looking in, so be it. They’re still almost certainly going to be playing meaningful baseball right to the wire, so I’ll be watching (and if you care enough about baseball that you’re reading this, I’d bet you will be watching, too).

Could MLB have played 100 games if owners and players had been able to come to an agreement sooner? Maybe. But even if they had, would that have made the season any more legitimate than what we’re dealing with now? There simply was no way that MLB was going to play anything close to a normal number of regular season games in 2020, so I’m not sure why anyone is even still complaining about the legitimacy issue. That issue is moot, so let’s move on.

The beat writers covering the American League Central Division teams for The Athletic posted a piece where they discussed each AL Central team’s outlook going into a 60-game season and those writers each made a compelling case for why fans in each of the five markets should have genuine interest in what transpires over the shortened season.

Niko Goodrum as a Cedar Rapids Kernel in 2013 (Photo by S. Buhr)

Even as a Twins fan, it got me excited about following the fortunes of the other four Divisional rivals, as well. (I admit, this may have been influenced some by Tigers beat writer Cody Stavenhagen answering the question “Is there a player on your team who could rise to prominence during this shortened season?” by suggesting we “keep an eye on” Niko Goodrum, one of my personal favorite Kernels alums.)

I’m not even worked up about the plans to use the minor league rule that places a runner on second base to start each extra inning. I didn’t like it when it was adopted for MiLB games, but I understood it was intended to reduce the chances that valuable young pitching arms would be over-worked in extended extra-inning games.

But that’s only part of why MLB is using it in 2020. Sure, it will reduce some wear and tear on relief pitching in a season where each team’s pool of potential roster replacements could be limited due to the minor league seasons being cancelled entirely.

More importantly though, it could help reduce the chances of players, coaches and other personnel contracting the COVID virus by keeping game times for extra-inning games to a minimum. It’s hard for me to object to that and it’s preferable to simply allowing games to end in a tie after nine innings.

If you are upset that a 60-game season just won’t be what a 162-game season would have been, you’re right. It won’t be.

But as a fan who typically watches a local minor league team essentially play two short seasons every summer, I can assure you that if you embrace it, a 60-game season has the potential to cram a lot of excitement into a couple of months of baseball.

And, by the way, if you want to do your part to make sure the players and coaches stay healthy, maybe consider wearing a mask whenever you’re out and about.

If we all do that, we can be more certain that the people we come into contact with who then come into contact with someone who comes into contact with a player or coach won’t pass something onto that guy that would keep him from getting through this season safe, healthy and productive.

We’ve never seen a MLB season like what’s happening in 2020 and, God willing, we will never see another one like it. I’m praying that all involved get through this season healthy and if prayer is your thing, too, please join me. If not, then… I dunno… cross your fingers and toes or something and just hope for the best.

A 60-game season is certainly not ideal. But it’s what we have. And it is has the potential to be very exciting. I’m embracing that and I hope you’ll eventually join me. It could be one heck of a ride.

Making a 50-Game MLB Schedule Work

Posted on 5 June, 2020 by Jim Crikket

Fifty games? In a Major League Baseball season? It’s some kind of joke, right?

We wish it was, but in 2020, the year a pandemic threatened to scratch entire professional and college sports seasons, it’s starting to feel like baseball fans will be lucky to get even a 50-game season.

I know. “Lucky” isn’t how I really feel, either. But when you consider that we’re almost certainly going to see zero minor league games in 2020, a 50-game MLB regular season, followed by an expanded post-season, is starting to look not so bad.

But how would you possibly put together a 50-game schedule that would result in anything resembling legitimate results?

Well, first of all, you need to immediately expand your usual standards for “legitimacy.”

Let’s face it, from the moment MLB sent players home from their spring training sites to wait out the pandemic crisis, there was never going to be a MLB season with even a trace of legitimacy to it. Individual and team records will mean nothing within any historical context.

This was never going to be anything but a glorified exhibition season, so let’s just not get wrapped up in what can or can’t be considered “legitimate.”

Yes, it could have been MORE legitimate if MLB owners had been willing to play 100+ games. as the MLB Players Association proposed. But that would have meant the teams’ owners would lose a few more dollars and we know that nobody parts with a nickel more reluctantly than MLB owners (unless it’s to pay off lobbyists and politicians to get favorable treatment from Congress, but that’s a totally different issue).

It looks like it will be something like a 50-game schedule or nothing at all. “Nothing at all” would be a black eye for both MLB and the players’ union, so let’s assume they’ll eventually agree to the short season.

Admittedly, the two sides probably deserve that black eye, given that neither of them has shown any regard for baseball fans throughout this process. But there’s a whole new round of negotiations over a new Collective Bargaining Agreement on the horizon in the next year, so there will be plenty of time and opportunities for both parties to demonstrate just how much of a shit they don’t give about fans then.

Back to the topic du jour. How could they make a 50-game schedule work?

First, throw out the American and National League labels fans have gotten accustomed to. We’re going to have a bunch of divisions based strictly on geography. This accomplishes a couple of things.

First, from a safety standpoint, it limits travel for teams. Let’s not forget that the COVID situation is not yet resolved. You minimize travel and you minimize the circle of contacts the uniformed members of each team have with different opponents.

Then you only play teams in your division. Period.

Not only does this minimize contact with other groups of players until the playoffs begin, but it at least offers some level of legitimacy to the results on the field.

If you play 50 games against 15 or 20 different teams, you don’t face any of those teams often enough to determine relative strength. But if you play all 50 games against just a few rivals, you stand a much better chance of at least crowning legitimate Division Champions.

How many teams in a division? Well, it obviously has to be an even number or you’d always have one team taking several consecutive days off. So we’re talking about five 6-team divisions, which allows teams to play ten games against each of their five divisional rivals.

That may not be as many games as they would typically play against division rivals in a 162-game season, but it’s a lot more than, say, major college teams play against one another, and conferences still seem to think that’s enough to declare conference champions.

So, you play 50 games and then start the postseason. But what would the postseason look like?

Well, if the owners had their way, they’d probably forgo the regular season entirely and just throw together a 30-team tournament. The prorated salary agreement from March only applies to regular-season games. No regular-season means no prorated player salaries. Problem solved!

But those greedy ballplayers won’t stand for that, will they? They’re going to want to get paid.

Reports are that both sides would agree to an expanded playoff structure this year, so let’s say it’s 16 teams, which seems to be the most prevalent number you hear being tossed around. How do you get 16 teams from five divisions, especially when there have been absolutely no cross-divisional games?

It’s not so hard, really.

Obviously, the five Division Champions go in. You’d probably even say the five Division runner-ups should all go into the postseason. So there are ten of the 16 teams.

I suppose you could say the six remaining teams with the best regular-season records should get the remaining spots, but how do you know a third place team in Division A, with a record a couple games above .500 is really better than the third place team in Division B, with a record a couple of games under .500, when you have no cross-divisional head-to-head games to base that opinion on?

So, I say we just add the five 3rd place finishers into the mix, giving us 15 teams. But who gets that final 16th spot?

Since I’m one of those people who actually LIKES the current system that forces two teams in each league to play a one-game, win-or-go-home wild card game every year, I’m going to suggest expanding the postseason field to 17 (or, potentially, more) teams. Of the remaining 15 teams, the two with the best record play a one-game play-in game. If there are ties for those spots, you play additional one-game play-in games to get to the play-in game. Just the way you can potentially have multiple “game 163” scenarios in a normal season. Let’s start the postseason with some immediate drama!

Once we have 16 teams, we have the issue of seeding. Seemingly, the simplest thing to do is seed the teams 1-16 based on regular-season record. (1-15, really. The wild card play-in game winner would be the automatic 16th seed). Seeding of teams with identical records could be determined by:

1) assuring they don’t play a team from their own division in the first round (no guarantees that might not happen in round 2, however), and
2) coin flip/draw straws/rock-paper-scissors/whatever. Not fair? So what. It’s one freaking season that barely counts as a season anyway. Get over it.

So let’s plug teams into these divisions and see how this might play out.

One Good Earthquake and We’re in the Ocean Division: Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland, LA Angels, LA Dodgers, San Diego

Deserts, Mountains and Other Wastelands Division: Arizona, Colorado, Texas, Houston, St. Louis, Kansas City

We Think We’re So Good We Don’t Know Why They Let Anyone Else Play Division: NY Yankees, NY Mets, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Toronto

Damn It’s Cold Here Division: Minnesota, Milwaukee, Chi White Sox, Chi Cubs, Detroit, Cleveland

We Didn’t Fit Anywhere Else Division: Cincinnati, Baltimore, Washington, Atlanta, Tampa Bay, Miami

Could you make an argument for slightly different alignments? Absolutely. Do I want to hear your arguments? Not really.

Playing only 50 games, at six games per week, you only need a little over eight weeks to play your season. Kick things off Friday, July 10 and you can be finished with your regular season over Labor Day Weekend (just like the minor leagues do in any normal season).

With five divisions and only 50 games being played, you know you’re going to have several very interesting series over the holiday. Then play your play-in game on Labor Day, itself. TV ratings, anyone?

So, 50 games later, we have standings that look like this:

Earthquake Division: 1-Dodgers 2-Oakland 3-Angels 4-San Diego 5-Seattle 6-San Francisco (Don’t like these picks? I don’t care)

Wastelands Division: 1-Houston 2-Arizona 3-St. Louis 4-Texas 5-Colorado 6-Kansas City (I still don’t think Houston should even be allowed in the postseason, but that ship sailed)

Arrogant A-holes Division: 1-Philadelphia 2-Boston 3-Pittsburgh 5-Toronto 6-Mets (NYY in 4th?! Yeah. Screw the Yankees)

Ice Division: 1-Minnesota 2-Cleveland 3-Milwaukee 4-Cubs 5-White Sox 6-Detroit (Cubs in 4th? Yeah. See “Yankees” above. Same deal)

Leftovers Division: 1-Washington 2-Atlanta 3-Tampa Bay 4-Cincinnati 5-Baltimore 6-Miami (hey look, we found a way the Orioles might not finish in last place!)

We’re going to say the Yankees and Cubs get the play-in game because, come on, who WOULDN’T want to hear the media and those two fan bases bitch forever about how they got screwed by having to play one game to get into the postseason?

We’ll say the Cubs win. I’ll admit this is possibly influenced by me not wanting there to be any chance the Twins have to face the Yankees in the postseason.

For the sake of brevity, we’re just going to assume the 16 teams get seeded using a zig-zag process. Frankly, for this situation, it would probably make more sense than trying to analyze completely unrelated schedules to determine legitimate seeds, anyway.

So we end up with 1-Dodgers 2-Houston 3-Philadelphia 4-Minnesota 5-Washington 6-Atlanta 7-Cleveland 8-Boston 9-Arizona 10-Oakland 11-Angels 12-St. Louis 13-Pittsburgh 14-Milwaukee 15-Tampa Bay 16-Cubs

Feel better about seeing it in a (very informal) bracket? How about this?

With all of the teams set after Labor Day, we can kick off the postseason on, let’s say, Wednesday, September 9. Let’s allow 13 calendar days for each of the first couple of rounds, simply because you know the networks aren’t going to want several games being played at once.

First round: September 9-22. Elite 8: September 24-October 7.

For the semi-finals and World Series, we can use the same schedule MLB uses for League Championships and World Series any other year. Start the semi-finals on a Friday and the World Series on a Tuesday (because that’s how the networks want it, dammit).

That gives us the semi-final series from October 9-18. Which sets up the World Series beginning Tuesday, October 20-28. We are all finished before November 1. Easy-peasy.

Now, explain to me why you wouldn’t watch these games. I know I would.

Book Review: “Game Used: My Life In Stitches with the Minnesota Twins”

Posted on 2 April, 2020 by Jim Crikket

Of all the non-players connected in some manner with the Minnesota Twins over the near-60 years that they’ve been in existence, I’m not sure you could find one more recognizable to Twins fans than Dick Bremer.

If you’ve been watching Twins telecasts since 1983, you’ve been watching him on television for some 37 years.

But I saw him first.

It is possible, if you listened to “Duke in the Dark” on KCLD in St. Cloud several years before his debut in the Twins’ broadcast booth, that you heard him before I did, but I and my fellow long-time Cedar Rapidians had the pleasure of watching Bremer report on sports for WMT-TV (Channel 2) in Cedar Rapids in 1979.

Before he became the TV voice of the Twins, Dick Bremer held down the sports desk for WMT in Cedar Rapids.

During spring training a year ago, I was on the back fields with Twins Daily’s Seth Stohs watching the minor leaguers when Bremer walked up to us and struck up a conversation with Seth, who then introduced me to Bremer.

I mentioned to him that I’m from Cedar Rapids and have been there long enough to remember him from his days at WMT. He smiled and shared a couple of anecdotes from his time in Cedar Rapids.

He also mentioned that he was including those stories, as well as one or two more, in a book he had been convinced to write and which would be released sometime within the next year or so.

Game Used: My Life In Stitches with the Minnesota Twins is that book and I bought an e-book version for my annual trip to Fort Myers, expecting to read it in between outings to the Twins’ spring training complex and the beaches.

As with most of the rest of the country, I found myself with much more down-time than I anticipated and I used a chunk of that time to allow Bremer to guide me through 108 stories – one for every stitch in a baseball – that stretch from his youth and throughout his professional career.

Twins fans’ opinions of Bremer are as widely disparate as they are for any Twins player that’s put on a uniform since he began doing play-by-play for the club. You can’t do the job he’s been doing since 1983 without garnering a fair number of critics. But you don’t keep such a public-facing job for so long without doing something right.

Personally, I’ve always liked his work. Granted, thanks to MLB blackouts, I didn’t get to watch and listen to Bremer nearly as frequently as fans who got to watch virtually every Twins broadcast in the past four decades, but I’ve always found Bremer extremely relatable. Until I read his book, though, I’m not sure even I understood just how closely I could relate to him.

Bremer and I are close in age (he’s my elder by four months) and we were both adopted as infants. We both spent much, but not all, of our formative years being raised in Minnesota and grew up huge fans of the Minnesota Twins of the 1960s and 1970s.

But while the life I chose to live as an adult continued to leave me relegated to the role of a fan, Bremer’s decision to leave me and the rest of his WMT viewership in Cedar Rapids and move back home to the Twin Cities positioned him to be able to take advantage of opportunities to meet and work with many of the Twins idols we shared as kids while providing the voice soundtrack to countless historical Twins games and seasons.

Broadcasters in most jobs are supposed to provide an unbiased narrative to the events they work and Bremer has done that job when covering various events over the years. But Major League Baseball clubs have no such expectations of the broadcasters they, along with their broadcast partners, employ to describe the local club’s games.

Say what you wish of that business model, but it’s worked well for Bremer. He is a Twins fan and has been his whole life. He’s you and me. And for generations of the team’s fans, he’s been as much a part of the action as Ray Scott, Herb Carneal and Halsey Hall were to me (and to Bremer, himself, no doubt).

In addition to the anecdotes like the one he shared with me about the role kazoos played in the 1980 Final Four appearance of Lute Olson’s Iowa Hawkeyes, Bremer has stories that provide a virtual guided tour through the last four decades of Twins baseball.

In case you need a reminder, that’s a stretch that includes time spent in all three stadiums that the Twins have called home, seasons under both ownership families in the club’s history, two World Series Championships, win-or-go-home tiebreaker games, a couple of near-relocations and a near-contraction.

Bremer also witnessed the very different conclusions to the careers of Twins greats such as Kirby Puckett, Kent Hrbek and Joe Mauer.

He was witness to the clubhouse reactions to the deaths of Puckett and his (and my) boyhood hero, Harmon Killebrew, to 9/11 and to the collapse of the I-35 bridge in the Twin Cities.

Bremer has been a regular at the Twins’ Fantasy Camps. His experiences from that, alone, are enough to make me insanely jealous.

There are moments that touch your soul, too. His recollections from Puckett’s funeral certainly fall into that category. But those moments aren’t all sad. In fact, some are quite the opposite, such as a certain gesture made by Ron Gardenhire related to the 1992 All-Star Game.

There are so many stories from the time spent in the broadcast booth with an array of analyst partners, especially Bert Blyleven. The Bremer-Blyleven partnership obviously plays a starring role in the book and be assured you’ll enjoy the stories, regardless of whether you always enjoy “Dick and Bert” in the booth.

If you’re looking for “dirt” on players, coaches, broadcasters or front office executives, you’re not going to find it in Bremer’s book. That’s not Bremer’s style.

But if you want to smile as he makes you feel like you’re there with him on the inside witnessing virtually every high, low and in-between moment of Twins baseball in the past four decades, you’re going to enjoy this book.

I know I did.

Recovery Whiplash

Posted on 25 March, 2020 by Jim Crikket

Part 1 – And Now For Something Completely Different…
Part 2 – It’s Going To Be a Long Winter
Part 3 – Holidays On One Foot
Part 4 – Post-Op Check Number 1 – So Far, So Good
Part 5 – A Very Good Day
Part 6 – Second Post-Op Check – So You Say There’s a Chance…
Part 7 – I Can Walk (Kind Of)!
Part 8 – Two Feet Are Better Than One
Part 9 – Lisfranc Recovery Roadtrip

Remember the good old days? Way back a couple of weeks ago when the biggest health-related concern I had was wondering if recovery from Lisfranc surgery on my broken left foot would keep me from being able to golf much longer?

It seems like forever ago. Things have certainly changed in a hurry for all of us. Talk about getting whiplash in terms of what’s really important.

So, this journal is going to expand its scope, at least for this post. Beyond that, who knows?

My last journal post mentioned I had made it to Florida, attended some spring training games, found a Physical Therapist to work with during the month of March and ended with a comment about how it had been a pretty good week.

Was that really only a little over two weeks ago?

Let’s summarize what’s happened since then.

The good news is that the foot is doing fine. The physical therapy I received in Ft. Myers was helpful. Walking in the pool a couple of times felt wonderful. At this point, even having ceased the PT sessions in favor of being much more conservative in terms of staying home, I can tell my foot is doing great. It’s gotten to where I can walk around pain-free, though I don’t move as quickly as I used to.

Even the stairs are something I can handle without pain. I did feel a pull in the calf muscle of my “healthy” leg while going down some stairs yesterday, though. I guess the physical therapists who kept insisting I needed to stretch the muscles in my calves every day knew what they were talking about, after all.

There’s still some swelling in the foot, so I continue to ice & elevate at times. But I haven’t even used the cane to walk for over a week. While I know it will be several more months before the foot is 100% again, I’m feeling really good about where I’m at with the recovery.

That’s about the end of the good news. After all, even the chances of keeping my April 14 check-up with my surgeon seem like a long shot right now.

I’m not sure we ever got a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle put together as quickly as we did while virtually locking ourselves into the condo.

The plan was to stay in Florida until sometime the first week of April. With the speed at which we went from attending baseball games to working on a jigsaw puzzle while being virtually self-quarantined in the condo, however, it became evident that staying in Florida would risk being forced to stay there by health and/or circumstances for a very long time.

One benefit of driving to Ft. Myers, rather than flying, is that you can go from “planning to stay a month” to “let’s get the hell out of here” in no more time than it takes to pack up the car.

Of course, even driving that 1,500 miles or so held some risk. How healthy would it be to stay at hotels for even one night? How healthy would it be to stop for gas… assuming gas stations would even be open?

In the end, the decision was to drive relatively straight through, leaving Ft. Myers just before noon on Friday, March 20, choosing a route that would hopefully dodge a pretty lengthy line of potential thunderstorms expected to stretch across the southeast that evening.

Outside of a brief one-hour catnap about 3 am and another couple hours of sleep at a rest stop in the pre-dawn hours Saturday morning, the plans to drive straight through, while sharing driving responsibilities, went forward without much of a hitch. Of course, every stop for gas also called for hand-washing/sanitizing and every meal was purchased at a drive-thru window, but by early afternoon on Saturday, I was taking a much-needed shower at home.

Once home, I flipped on the TV, then looked at my calendar, mentally making a note of the date 14 days into the future, April 4, which would constitute two weeks after completing the trip. If I can get to that date healthy, I’ll feel like I survived that trip without contracting the coronavirus while in Florida.

In the meantime, it’s two weeks of pretty much “shelter-in-place.” Maybe an occasional meal from a drive-thru restaurant, but for the most part, there’s really no reason for me to go outside other than to take out the garbage or go for a walk… and my “walks” are still pretty short, anyway.

The toughest part is not seeing the kids and grandkids for another extended time. After all, it felt like I had just emerged from “exile” caused by having to stay home following the foot surgery before I left for Florida and now I’m right back in isolation again.

But I survived the post-op months and I’ll survive a couple (or maybe a few) weeks longer, if it means doing my part to make sure we all get through this thing without completely overwhelming our medical facilities and killing thousands (millions?) of people (a large proportion of them likely to be medical heroes) in the process.

I’m in my 60s, with a history of asthma that makes getting through your normal variety of flu a bit of a challenge at times and some seasonal allergies, but otherwise, I’m pretty healthy, so I’m not overly concerned.

That doesn’t keep me from “wondering” every time I blow my nose or cough just a little bit. Is it just allegies… just my normal asthma cough? Or is this the start of something worse?

I’ve got a digital thermometer that I simply press to a temple to get a reading and I admit that I’m doing that at least two or three times a day, even though I haven’t felt anything close to a fever.

It’s the wondering that is toughest, for me, anyway.

I want all of you and everyone you care about to get through this thing safely and I especially want medical workers and everyone else who doesn’t have the option of self-isolation to have a fighting chance to stay healthy, as well.

So, take the precautions you can and hopefully, we’ll all get back to focusing on things like baseball in a few weeks/months.

Bet On It! Part 3

Posted on 8 March, 2020 by Jim Crikket

It has been over a month since we checked in on the MLB “Futures” at the William Hill and Elite sportsbooks and with spring training now well underway, it seems like a good time to see how the betting odds for the Twins (and others) are looking.

Of course, even if I see something really interesting, it won’t do me any good right now since I’m in Florida at least through the end of the month and the Sunshine State has not legalized sports betting, yet. So, while I can look up odds at the two booking sites I subscribe to, I can’t actually place any bets until I get back in Iowa.

Then again, with my inability to accurately predict college basketball games, that’s probably a good thing.

First, let’s take a look at an updated version of the chart outlining the Twins’ odds to succeed at various levels in 2020.

A couple of things jump out at us here and they’re mostly reflective of the folks at William Hill coming around to thinking the Twins might be better than originally thought.

William Hill’s odds on the Twins to win the American League pennant and the World Series have continued to drop.

Before the Twins signed Josh Donaldson, William Hill had the Twins at 12-1 and 22-1 to win the AL and World Series, respectively. Those numbers have improved to where they stand at 7-1 and 14-1 now. Interestingly, while Elite has adjusted their line on a Twins AL pennant from 10-1 to 8-1, they continue to see them as 20-1 longshots to win WS rings.

Overall, I’m feeling pretty good about booking my bets on the Twins to win the AL at 11-1 and the Series at 22-1. Now, all I need is for the guys to actually, you know, win!

Both books have increased the over/under on Twins regular season wins by one win since the end of January, with William Hill still projecting one more win than Elite does.

A few other interesting notes, just glancing at the differences between the two sportsbook sites:

Like everyone, they both like the Yankees to win it all. You get just a little above even money on the Yankees to win the AL pennant and a bit better than 3-1 odds on a bet to win the WS. There are so many other good teams that those odds don’t seem worthwhile to me. Let the Yankee fans feed the rest of us.

If you think the Astros can overcome their issues and ride their “us against the world” mentality into a repeat championship, you want to look at William Hill where you can get 9-1 odds on a Houston title. Elite is offering just 5-1 on the ‘stros. Both are third on the list behind the Yankees and Dodgers (3-1 WmH & 4-1 Elite).

In the last article, we saw a huge discrepancy between the two sites where the Red Sox were concerned. WmH had them at 12-1 to win the AL, while Elite had them at 5-1.

Man, the people who took that 5-1 bet are kicking themselves. They’ve become 18-1 at WmHill and 12-1 at Elite.

We also looked in on the Angels last time, when Elite was offering 17-1 odds on winning the AL and an almost irresistible 35-1 odds to win the Series (at least it was irresistible to me). That’s come down to 14-1 to win the AL and 30-1 on the WS now. The odds have remained at 10-1 (AL) and 18-1 (WS) at WmH.

How about that pesky team in Cleveland? They were getting 7-1 at Elite and 14-1 at WmH to win the AL last we checked in. Today, they’re at 12-1 at Elite, while remaining at 14-1 at WmH.

Looking at the American League Central race, while both sites have the Twins as favorites and the same predicted order of finish, there are some differences in the odds.

Cleveland gets just +120 to win the ALC at Elite, but 3-1 odds at WmH.

The White Sox get nearly identical lines (+350 Elite and +325 WmH). Of note, that puts Cleveland and Chicago in a virtual dead heat for the second spot in the Central, according to WmH.

I had to check the Royals lines several times to believe what I was seeing. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a discrepancy between the two sportsbooks like Kansas City’s odds to win the AL Central.

Elite set the line at +750. That’s 15-2 (or 7 1/2 – 1). But WmH will give you 60-1 odds on a Royals division championship. Now, I don’t see any way in hell the Royals win the AL Central, so maybe the odds don’t matter. But, still, that’s an incredible difference and a prime example of why you always want to shop around. Imaging being the Royals fan who decided to put a few bucks on their favorite team at Elite, only to later find out they could have gotten 60-1 odds at WmH.

The Tigers, of course, pull up the back end of the division, getting 125-1 odds at Elite and 300-1 at WmH.

Interestingly, Elite has Cleveland and Minnesota both at 20-1 to win the World Series (along with Milwaukee and Philadelphia at the same odds, placing them tied for 10th on the list of WS favorites). WmHill likes the Twins twice as much as Cleveland, though. While the Twins are at 14-1, Cleveland is at 28-1.

William Hill has set some additional prop bets that weren’t out there before, such as pitting two teams against one another in a race to see which will win 30 games first.

For instance, you can bet on whether the Twins or Braves will reach 30 Ws first. Braves are even odds, Twins at -120.

When you shift to Twins vs Astros on the same bet, the Astros are favorites at -130, while the Twins get you +110.

The Twins are favored to get to 30 before the A’s. Twins paying -125, while Oakland gets +105.

Are you tired of RBIs not being a meaningful offensive statistic? Put a little money on Nelson Cruz to be the MLB leader in ribbies at 15-1 odds. Or go crazy and take Josh Donaldson at 60-1. Eddie Rosario & Miguel Sano both list at 100-1.

Jorge Polanco will get you 28-1 odds if he finishes as the MLB leader in hits.

What will it take to lead the Majors in home runs this season? Is the ball still juiced or will it be deadened? The over/under is set at 50 1/2 bombas.

Think Jose Berrios is going to become the ace we’ve been waiting for? Go get the 40-1 odds being offered on Berrios being the MLB ERA leader.

So many options. How will I possibly be able to wait three weeks before I can throw my money away on them?

Lisfranc Recovery Road Trip

Posted on 7 March, 2020 by Jim Crikket

Part 9 of my “journal” related to my Lisfranc injury to my left foot. If you’re coming late to the party and want to go back and read how I got to this point, click the links below.

March 7, 2020

11 weeks post-op

If you look at the updated picture of my feet somewhere on this page, you may not, at first, notice much different about it in comparison to the pictures that were included in the past couple of posts. The left foot has a visible scar (though it is fading some) and the foot remains a bit swollen.

Scar is fading some. The swelling here doesn’t look too bad, but this was taken after icing for a while. It gets pretty puffy pretty much any time the foot is not elevated.

But check out the background… it’s not the same as prior pictures. This photo was taken in the TV room at the condo in Fort Myers, Florida!

After being convinced that the Lisfranc injury and subsequent surgery was going to mean no trip to Florida this spring, it turned out to simply delay those plans. By the time February came to a close, I was enjoying the (relative) warmth of the Sunshine State.

I got 7 physical therapy sessions completed in Cedar Rapids before hitting the road for Florida. They were focused mostly on range of motion and massage, but by the time we were finished, I was off the crutches and only using the walking boot in situations that were going to involve standing/walking for extended periods. For the most part, however, I was able to get by with comfortable walking shoes that allowed me to significantly loosen the laces of the left shoe to fit the swollen left foot.

While I’ve been able to hobble around for short distances, I’ve still been using a cane any time a walk of any significant distance is involved. Being up and about for extended periods will cause some aching, but otherwise there’s very little pain involved with normal activities.

The one exception that remains is the significant twinge that occurs any time I try to put weight on the balls of the left foot.

I also found a physical therapist to pick up the PT sessions while I’m in Florida and I’ve now completed two of those sessions. They are continuing massage and range of motion work, but are adding exercises related to balance. I was a little surprised to discover that I’ve lost the ability to maintain much, if any, balance on my left foot. Still, I can tell I’ve made a lot of progress.

The therapist is encouraging me to make use of the pools at the condo complex. Walking in the pool is, apparently, one of the best exercises I can do. The water not only significantly reduces the amount of weight the foot has to support, but the water pressure also minimizes the swelling that exercise otherwise would cause.

I’ve only gotten to the pool once in the first week in Florida, but I can verify that the walking felt really good.

Getting some use out of my cane even while sitting and watching a baseball game. When Rick Dobnak (father of Twins pitcher Randy Dobnak) took this shot of me, I was either concentrating hard on the game or getting in a quick nap. I’m not saying which.

Why only once? Well, the temperatures in the morning have been a little cool, so that’s a good excuse. But the reality is that I’ve spent quite a bit of time going to Minnesota Twins spring training games. That’s a big reason I come down here, after all.

Walking, in general, really doesn’t cause much discomfort, especially if I’m wearing shoes or walking on carpet.

Naturally, the condo has all bambo wood flooring. I found, though, that wearing sandals alleviates any pain. So I bought a new pair of sandals with the velcro adjustable band that goes across the middle of the foot. (The adjustability is necessary because my left foot is virtually always swollen at least a little bit. Sometimes more than a little.)

The sandals led to a new discovery.

The upper side of the sole (that the foot rests on) is embossed with the Reebok logo where my heel rests. And that felt like little tiny pins sticking into my heel whenever I wore them on bare feet.

It took me a while to figure out why that was the case.

Then I remembered that, when my splint was removed a couple of weeks after surgery, my foot was essentially shedding the top layer of dead skin that included any natural calluses on the sole and heel of my foot. The result, I guess, is that the sole and (especially) heel of the injured foot has new and extremely sensitive skin.

There really is something new with this thing every week.

Oh, speaking of new things… guess what my physical therapist told me to do! If you guessed “golf,” you’re absolutely right!

Well, she didn’t EXACTLY tell me to do that, but it was close enough that I chose to hear it that way.

First time swinging a golf club since before the injury. It felt really, really good.

I mentioned I was looking forward to being able to golf again and she suggested that I start going to the driving range now and doing some chipping and other easy swings with my irons, so I get used to the shifting of weight on uneven ground, etc.

That’s what she said. But what I heard was, “You can start golfing now.”

Anyway, it took me less than 24 hours from that appointment before I was at the driving range, swinging my 9-iron and 6-iron nice and easy. And it felt great! I hit about 15 or 20 balls with each club and had no pain. That left me with about five balls left from the bucket.

I couldn’t resist. Out came the Big Bertha driver.

Five drives, with a very easy swing. Four down the middle and one sliced. Heck, that’s a LOT better ratio than I’ve had with two healthy feet the past couple of decades!

This has all just been a long way of saying this has been a pretty good week!