Boredalt wrote:
My brother, Steve, enjoys the idea of money as much as the next guy, but Steve wants to have a lot of money because of something HE did that others did not. To this end, Steve likes to bet on sports. He’s forever studying the stats like some kind of crystal ball, looking for an angle—the golden nugget—the epiphany that reveals the hidden marker that only he can see. Admittedly, Steve is much better at this than anyone else I know. (I’m not sure if this is much of an accolade considering that I know precious few people who are into losing their hard-earned green because some horse or running back or shortstop or point guard has the shits or whatever at show time, knocking him off his game.) Steve wagers small amounts as he works out the kinks in his system. I suppose he is saving the BIG SCORES for a time when he feels it is finally ready. I know that he has not yet discovered the Holy Grail in this endeavor, as he is not independently wealthy, and he has not bragged about his system of late. Still, the search goes on. Why?
Steve is a sensible man. He has been to Las Vegas, a city built on the “systems” of men who study the games. He has seen the magnificent resorts. He knows how they exist. Still, the search goes on. Why?
If a game can be beaten with regularity by any gambler, then the casinos in Las Vegas DON’T tickling OFFER THAT GAME! And, yet, Steve can enter a Sports Book and bet on virtually ANY sport. In the last few years, offshore establishments have popped up on the Internet which allows the Steves among us to hone their crafts from the comfort of their homes. With the dawning of each new day, the paper boy tosses a passel of new excitement. With eager anticipation, our Steves jump passed headlines of the Middle East, crime waves, government corruption, droughts, famine, and all the other bad news. With the lingering effects of a heady morning wood bolstering his mood, our hero can get to what REALLY matters! Today’s EPIPHANY! Who is pitching in the first game of the Mets/Giants double-header in New York, or did the Twins use up their bullpen on the road last night in Oakland?
Ah, the bullpens. Steve tickling hates the bullpens of baseball. I can’t tell you how many games his system “had pegged” until a bullpen blew it. Bullpens make him drink an extra beer or two, stay up late watching extra inning games that didn’t have to happen, scream at the beanball Gods, and search. Always searching. And, in each sport it is the same. There is some conundrum that fucks with the system just enough times to make him lose. In football, it’s “the tickling kicker”. In basketball, it’s “the tickling refs”. In horse racing, it’s “the tickling jockey”. Systems depend on hard facts. But some things can’t be quantified, and these tiny “extras” are all the bookies need to build the goddamned Bellagio. Why does he do it?
I think he does it because Steve hates to think of his life as a roll of the dice—tumbling balls in the lotto machine. He is terrified of the prospect that everything depends on luck. One guy is born Prince William with a silver spoon so far up his ass it couldn’t be dislodged with power tools, and another schlub squirts out into the chicken poopy on the dirt floor of a mud hut in Sudan. Somebody hits the lottery…somebody gets decapitated by a flying forklift falling from the back of a truck. Somebody lives to 110 smoking camels and drinking a fifth of Jack Black every day…somebody is killed by a mosquito bite. So, it goes. We live ALL IN and we’re just an unlucky deal from losing our seat at the table. Randomness. Luck.
This is different from fate. Fate implies some predestination which in turn implies that God set up everything in advance and the dominos are simply falling. “God did it!” “Thank God!” That would be easier to stomach, right? If it is Fate, every move is laid out. Steve isn’t to blame, and doesn’t deserve credit for anything that happens. But, if it is random, EVERY move he makes is a significant one, making all of the dominos fall differently. Everything is HIS fault. The problem here, obviously, is that he just doesn’t know which move is a winner, or which little move is a BIG loser. There are hundreds of scenarios that might have kept any one of the people who died on 9-11 from being in exactly that place at exactly that time.
So, Steve wages his assault on randomness and fate by trying to disprove randomness, and ignoring fate. If Steve can simply apply reason to unravel some small aspect of the seemingly random, CARPE DIEM! If he can just know who is going to I HAVE NOTHING TO ADD PLEASE DISREGARD MY POST a game--if he can do it repeatedly, without doubt--then EVERYTHING might be figured out and manhandled! But enough of this metaphysical mumbo jumbo, let’s talk about something important, like the Rangers’ bullpen.
And yet it's very possible.
Azelma - I was asked, I answered, nothing more.
