Sports Betting with Bozz: Or Columbus, OH softball
This is the time of week that I am usually writing and telling you all about the sports bets that I made over the weekend and how much money I made on them. Well, that isn't going to happen this week for a number of reasons.
First of all, I honestly didn't get to place that many bets this weekend. We were down in Ohio watching my niece play softball pretty much all day on Saturday. Like a moron, I forgot to place my college football bets ahead of time.
While sports gambling is legal in Michigan, it is not legal in Ohio. At least not yet. I have heard they are planning on launching the first of next year. What that means is while in Ohio, I wasn't able to use my FanDuel app to place any bets. I've mentioned this before the app has pretty strict location requirements and if it can't verify that, it won't work.
My wife suggested I use my Nord VPN app to say I was in a state where gambling is legal. Unfortunately, they thought of that too and the app will not work if you are connected to a VPN. So I had to settle for placing zero college football bets this past weekend.
We made it home on Sunday for me to get some NFL bets in before the games started, but I lost all three or four of those that I place, so there isn't much point of talking about them.
Instead, this post is going to be all about softball. Sorry for the bait and switch there.
It was a cold October day of softball at Lou Berliner Sport Park in Columbus, OH. It was about 55 degrees Fahrenheit and there was no sun with a wind gusting at 10 to 20 miles per hour. That brought the "feels like" temperature down into the forties. @mrsbozz had her winter coat on and she was still freezing.
I've mentioned this before, but my niece recently started playing on a new team. While her old team had a lot of her friends on it, it wasn't very competitive. Both my niece and her sister are very competitive. They also are quite athletic, so playing on a team that was squandering/stunting her potential was very frustrating to my niece.
It was a hard decision, but I don't think she is regretting making the move at all. In their last tournament they went undefeated to take home the championship ring. Yep, that's right, apparently the new thing is for tournaments to hand out rings just like the professional sports do. Of course they aren't nearly as expensive, but she showed me her ring from the previous week and I was surprised how heavy and well made it was.
Unfortunately, this past weekend they weren't able to accomplish a repeat, but it was still a joy to watch her play. They played four games on Saturday. 9:00 AM, 12:30 PM, 3:30 PM, and 5:00 PM. As is the case, several of those games got pushed until later times due to other games going over and fields not being available.
In this tournament each game was scheduled for 75 minutes, but if they were in the middle of an inning they would usually let that inning finish. Well, if it is a long inning, that 75 minute game can quickly become 90 minutes or more. You can see how this might screw up schedules throughout the day.
This is probably one of my favorite photos that I took from the day. My niece hit a high blooper that she thought was going to go foul. The infielder misplayed the ball and my niece made it safely to first base. You can see her looking up at the ball after she hit it here.
After she got onto first, her coach who was standing on the third baseline shouted across the field and said "what am I going to ask you?" Her dad who was sitting right next to me said "why aren't you on second?". The coach heard him and said "Dad's right, why aren't you on second?, you two will need to have a talk about that on the way home".
It was a serious, yet lighthearted interaction that really made me happy that my niece found this team. Yes, she shouldn't have assumed the ball was going to be caught and not hustled around the bases. She definitely could have made it to second base if she had tried, but the coach wasn't mad, he just used it as a teaching moment and isn't that what good coaches are supposed to do?
My nieces older sister drove down from college to surprise her. It was nice to spend some time with her. My wife and I had stopped on our way down to take her out to breakfast between softball conditioning and class, but it was a bonus to get to spend extra time with her on Saturday.
As you can see, she had her stocking cap on and heavy team coat. You thought I was joking about how cold it was didn't you? Trust me, I'm from Michigan, when I say it's cold, it's cold....
I thought this picture turned out really well too. She is so laser focused when she is playing softball. I guess it only makes sense that the team she settled on is called the "Lasers".
As I mentioned, they won their first three games and by the time their fourth game started, it was a good hour past when they were supposed to play. The ladies were tired and their mental focus was fading. They ended up losing that game due to some mental errors. Once again though, the coach used it as a learning opportunity and stayed cool headed even through the culmination of the loss.
Luckily, the first day of play was "pool play". Basically just random games to get them warmed up and give them at-bats and fielding practice. Sort of like a scrimmage. Sometimes the pool play games give you a seed for bracket play the next day, but that wasn't the case at this tournament. The bracket was determined ahead of time by a blind draw.
Which really means they could have done a hard cut off on the games when they hit that 75 minute mark to keep things on schedule, but for some reason they didn't.
As the final game continued to progress and the chances of them pulling out a victory started to dwindle, the sun slowly started to sink beyond the horizon. While many of the diamonds at Berliner park have lights, we were way in the back for this game where there are no lights.
As the last bit of light was fading out and we were getting to the point where the ladies might not even be able to see the ball in the outfield, the game was over. We packed up our stuff after a very long day and headed back to their house.
The next day my wife and I got an early start for the four hour drive home. My niece played two games on Sunday, they won the first one and were eliminated from bracket play on the second one. Oddly enough, in the game that they lost, they turned three double plays all in the same game. That's a rarity for this level of softball. It just goes to show how hard they played even until the end.
I feel bad that her team wasn't able to make it further in the tournament, but there are lots of games ahead of her and many more chances to win some rings. I don't think the one from the other weekend will be the last one she puts on her shelf.
Sports Talk Social - @bozz.sports
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I have to confess, I don't understand the game at all, but the images are impressive.
And how do you guys remember what is legal or illegal in each state? Must be so confusing when you can buy, do, drink things in one state but not another....
Yeah, the state laws can get kind of confusing. It's not just gambling either. Now you have weed that is legal in some states but not in others. One of the big parts of the constitution is the states being able to make their own laws I think, so I don't see that changing any time ever! Softball is a lot like baseball, just underhand pitching instead of overhand.