Continuing the noob sports betting guide I started earlier, I thought I would begin covering the sports with the most excitingly betable sport of all, baseball.
What I mean by saying baseball is the most excitingly bet worthy sport is that it offers the best sweat1 hands down. Other people may offer other particular sports they favor as offering a better sweat, and reasonable arguments exist for most sports. Different people favor different things,2 and different people value different aspects of gameplay unequally on aesthetics.
I'm going to offer a few reasons here as to why I find baseball offers an incredibly sweat3
- Game actions are explosive and decisive. The pitcher throws the ball. The batter swings and smashed the ball. The runner on base can steal the next base by running before the pitcher can throw the ball. These things and nearly ever other activity in the game of baseball share that they happen quickly, with intent, and with decisive effect on the outcome of the game. In many games, just one pitch swatted outside the of the range of a fielder's glove determines the outcome of the entire contest.
- There's a lot of unequally weighted downtime between all of these explosive actions. The downtime in the game allows for building tensions. Tension as great conflict between the Apollonian grace and Dionysian chaos is a root of great art. The grace of Carlos Beltran fielding a fly ball and the free swinging of Pablo Sandoval epitomize this conflict in baseball. In a competition where action is continuous like basketball, scoring opportunities and the denial thereof blend together and become rather forgetable, because the game just keeps on going. The time between each at bat, between each out, allows for the flow of the game to build such that one last out can lead to either a crescendo of victory or sigh of resignation.
- For most offensive actions, the expected outcome is failure. Most at bats end in outs, most attempts to steal a base end in outs. This is predominant to the effect that any offensive progress at all in the game seems ordained.4
- The refinement of player skills necessary to compete on the top level is incredible. The fastest sprinter is not the best base runner. The hardest thrower isn't the best pitcher. The absence of a great catcher behind the plate can lead to a long losing streak. Much like in poker the knowledge of minutia, and the refinement and application thereof, is what separates a .250 batting average from a .330 batting average.
- Few rushes compare to picking a replacement player who seizes super stardom well before the talking heads do.
- Labor in the games works, as an actual market. Many major sports leagues have crippled and hamstrung their member teams in the name of monsters like "competitive balance" and fairness while Major League Baseball flips the bird and lets teams stack their deck with the cards they can.
Now that this is out of the way, the rest of this series should proceed with a sport covered every several days. I plan to cover the major American sports and sports that aren't American, but are much more enjoyably betable than popular 'Murican sports.
- Sweat is a term of art that belongs to betting persons. It refers to the excitement that comes from watching an event where you have a stake riding on the outcome. [↩]
- Everyone has their own kind which is different from everyone else's kink based on their position in space and time, as well as the path they have traveled in space and time to get there. These kinks tend to largely follow well established patterns though. [↩]
- Also yes, in spite of what many might suggest betting for the sweat is how to bet, especially starting out. [↩]
- Note that for gamblers who present hazards to themselves, this phenomenon where progress seems ordained can lead to adverse outcomes and tremendous losses. [↩]
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