As Vince Cullie of your La-La Land Los Doyers used to say on just about every broadcast of exciting béisbol action, ‘Deuces wild!’
Gonna say it here, say it now, say it loud, say it clear: Vince Cullie is frequently made a big deal of, and we salute him for his longevity and his being an permanent fixture of diamond history. Nonetheless, the guy never stopped talking when the ON-AIR sign was lit. A lot of words, a surplus of gas, too much bloat.
The better part of baseball is its easy, relaxing pace, like an automobile drive down Pacific Coast Highway on a weekend morning, controlled speed, plenty of traffic signals, no hurries, no worries. The announcers should respect that time between pitches, slow down the delivery, give the game a chance to breathe.
But we get it. La-La Land is a glib place, and if you’re not stretching and filling in the radio or TV business, you’re not doing the proper job.
But that applies to La-La Land only. In Philly, in Detroit, in St. Louis, and everywhere but La-La Land, the announcing style for baseball simply has to be more laconic. The fans demand it. So, as fans of your fightin’ Philalala Phillies, we say thank you, Harrie Kalas Sr. Thank you, Whitey Ashburn. And to this day, thank you, Scott Franzke, thank you Larrie Anderson Jr. (Although Larrie is always being a crank on the air these days; still, it’s better than being glib.)
Another theory is that if you grow up listening to a particular broadcaster for several hours a day for years and years and years, you take on that broadcaster’s speaking style. Hence all us mopes from Philly will undoubted sound stuffed-up and deliberate, slow of speech, like Harrie Kalas Sr. used to. And all the mopes who have listed to Vince Cullie for their formative years will end-up talking a mile a minute, padding the language and not stopping once for a breather. Listen to your friends and see if this is true in your experience.
But baseball is in a lockout, so let’s talk about the late, lamented Zongo Race Club, which is no longer among the quick. Its demise is made more bearable by the emergence on the scene of the brand-new Best Line Racing Society.
It’s more inclusive and more realistic of the game we play today. We no longer have to struggle finding bad morning-line faves to try to beat. We go with a more holistic approach now.
That’s reflected in the newfangled formulation of the BestLine itself. Fair Odds and positive-expectation have never been more playable, more accessible, more in tune with a realistic style of play that holds up race after race.
That’s because we have finally learnt to trust the BestLine, ourselves, and focus on the top more than on some arbitrary edge-play at the bottom of the output. We are giving credit where it’s due — namely among the top handful of worthy contenders. We are basically shunning the bottom-feeders by demanding such fantastical odds on them, they generally go unheeded, and they are not really missed.
To wit, look at today’s (Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2022, deuces wild!) card at Gulf Park in South Florida.
When’s the last time you could cash in on win-mutuels of $12.60, $10.20 and $8.20 on a card and feel confident you were getting good value and not being stuck with underlays?
Well, thanks to the new BestLine output, the premium-edge odds on these well-meant winners were, respectively, 3.90-1, 2.55-1 and 2.90-1, good for real-life plus-side plays whose positive-expectation rates were 54.3 percent, 72.4 percent and 26.2 percent. The edge is calculable!
But if you still want to bomb away and take on that added overhead of chasing the biggest of the big win-mutuels, BestLine is flexible enough to cater to your longshot needs.
Back to the Gulf card now for a $93.80 winner. BestLine gave it a scant 8.2 percent win-probability, and its new premium-edge odds were pushed out to a very high 23.39-1. Yet the actual 45-1 odds on the $93.80 winner suggested you could intelligently play it despite the low chances of winning.
Low-priced overlays, high-priced overlays. It’s all in there for yourself via the rejiggered BestLine Fair Odds & Premium-Edge Betting Line. A bargain for $99 for the rest of your 2022. Full Friday, Saturday & Sunday coverage.
Thanks for listening.
