By Thomas Chambers

The old adage that before OTBs you had to go to the track to get a bet down on a horse has a huge qualifier attached: legally, that is. Of course, at least for most of the history of horse racing as we know it, it’s always been possible to place bets through a bookie, outside the purview of the track.
Betting off-track has taken two huge leaps in the last 40 years. The first was in the late 1960s when satellite television of racing pictures could be and was beamed to simulcast centers both on- and off-track. In fact, way back in 1968, entrepreneur Merv Griffin had the genius to purchase Teleview Patrol, the nascent satellite service then developing its business of providing racing transmissions to Las Vegas and to the new Off-Track Betting industry. The Griffin Group still owned the service at the time of his death in August 2007.
The second was, you guessed it, the Internet. And especially mass access to broadband Internet speeds. While porn on the internet irritated the people it always irritates, tenets of free speech and expression were basically in place. In the case of gambling, everyone from the state and federal governments to the racing industry itself were befuddled by the capabilities of this new technology.

Read More

Posted on February 27, 2009

By Dan O’Shea

NBA teams kept trading right up until the last minute before the trading deadline last week – or at least three of them did: our hometown Bulls, the Sacramento Kings and the New York Knicks. What those trades yielded for the Bulls is a debate only just getting started, but a few fantasy effects have since become clear.
To recap, the Bulls traded Andres Nocioni, Drew Gooden and some baggage to Sacramento for Brad Miller and John Salmons. They also traded the inactive Larry Hughes to the Knicks for Tim Thomas. So, who are the fantasy winners and losers?

Read More

Posted on February 25, 2009

By Jim Coffman

Hey people, can we get something straight about Milt Bradley right now? Just because he’s edgy doesn’t mean he’s effective. I’m officially fed up with reading misguided missives about how the free agent right fielder who actually played much more designated hitter than anything else last year will make a difference for this Cub team because he’ll light a fire under more laconic teammates. What exactly has he won that leads people to this conclusion?

Read More

Posted on February 23, 2009

By Thomas Chambers

Back in my rookie days, horse wagering meant going to the track. Living downtown, it’s easy to get to Arlington, location-wise, but other factors make it a real excursion. (I assure you I will get to those factors in a future column.) Why is it that sports management never really makes it easy on the fans?
One day, a solution literally dawned on me: Go to the OTB, the off-track betting “parlor.” Duh! I tried the Mud Bug: See below. I walked in to State Street and immediately walked out: Yecch. Then I ambled down to Jackson Street: The rest is history.

Read More

Posted on February 20, 2009

By Dan O’Shea

Trades, trades and more trades. The NBA trading deadline was only hours away as of this writing, and a handful of deals already had taken plus within the last few days, though probably only one with much fantasy significance. That would be the exchange of Shawn Marion and Marcus Banks for Jermaine O’Neal and Jamario Moon.
By moving from Miami to Toronto, Marion gets back with a team that more willing to play the fast-paced game he was used to in Phoenix during his best years. Does he still have what it takes? He has been managing around 12 points per game and 8.7 rebounds per game this year, off his career averages. With Chris Bosh out in Toronto, Marion takes over at power forward, but center Andrea Bargnani has been doing most of the front-court scoring for Toronto of late.

Read More

Posted on February 18, 2009

By Jim Coffman

The Blackhawks played well in the first period of an actual home game against the Dallas Stars on Saturday night (their first contest back in the United Center after a marathon road trip). They played even better in the second. And it wasn’t just me who was sayin’ it, it was still splendid play-by-play man Pat Foley, who referred to the initial 20 minutes as “good” and the time between intermissions as “great.” But it was the first 2:19 of the third period that provided yet more conclusive evidence that this team is something special.

Read More

Posted on February 16, 2009

By Thomas Chambers

In Playing the Ponies, the Three Stooges traded a depressed 1937 diner (even with the popular menu item of hot water poured through a chicken) to a couple of swindlers for Thunderbolt, a swayback has-been Thoroughbred. Their only angle was that the crooks told them he could really run. On their way out the door, Curly grabs a big handful of chili pepperinos, thinking they were salted peanuts. They get to the track and realize this horse doesn’t want to do much of anything. Curly eats some pepperinos and makes a beeline for the water trough, so they figure, what if we gave these to the horse? So in the end, they give the pepperinos to the horse. With Larry riding, Moe and Curly run a motorcycle and sidecar with a bucket of water like a carrot on a stick to make the horse chase it. They mop up big.
I was reminded of this while watching the first two installments of Jockeys,” a “reality” show now running on the Animal Planet channel. While I never saw Curly carry a horse six furlongs (a huge steamer trunk or a ton of ice, yes, but not a horse), you would have thought these jockeys in the show were doing just that. The old adage, though, is that a good jockey never wins you a race, but a bad one will lose it for you. It’s always about the horse.

Read More

Posted on February 13, 2009

By Dan O’Shea

Major League Baseball was rocked this week by the confession from Alex Rodriguez that he “experimented” with steroids while playing for the Texas Rangers, a span of three seasons during which he had two of the three biggest single-season home run tallies of his career.
I will leave the condemning of A-Rod to others, and let you privately mull whether or not A-Rod’s career is marred beyond repair. It may sound cold (and ironically supportive of steroids usage, though I assure that is not the case), but all we care about in the fantasy baseball world is numbers, and the factors which might affect those numbers.
Can A-Rod be counted on again for numbers that made him the consensus No. 1 fantasy baseball pick for at least the last four seasons?

Read More

Posted on February 11, 2009

By Jim Coffman

This week’s observations were going to write themselves. It started with Monday’s featured game on ESPN, where I was sure I would watch, and then describe, another stellar performance by the Chicago guy who has lifted his college basketball team the highest so far this season. Sherron Collins had done everything during inexperienced Kansas’ surprising undefeated run through the first eight games of the conference campaign. He led the team in points (18 per game) and assists (five) going in. Sure enough, Collins led the Jayhawks to a 14-point lead at halftime over Big 12 rival Missouri.
Later on in the column I figured I would dive into what appeared to be obvious angles regarding the Hawks and the Bulls. Everything was all set. Except it wasn’t. Ah, sports.

Read More

Posted on February 10, 2009

By Thomas Chambers

I am not a gambler. I am a horseplayer.
Horseplayers like to think that through experience, diligent research, finding the key elements of a horse’s past performances and just plain following the game, finding a winner is more intellect than guesswork. But don’t tell me that after a 42-1 shot wires a bunch of $5,000 claimers. After races like that, either your hindsight sharpens to Superman levels or you still wouldn’t have picked him in a million years.

Read More

Posted on February 6, 2009