MLB BETTING: A Summer Love Letter to Baseball, and the Man Who Won $25,000 Betting on Home Runs

“Summer lovin’, had me a blast. Summer lovin’, happened so fast” - John Travolta & Olivia Newton John, Grease (1978)

This summer I fell in love. Not with a person, but a sport. The sport of baseball. 

Although I have always been a general sports fan with a passing interest in almost all of them, baseball had been one of those rare sports that never really held my attention. Like many Americans born this side of the Gulf War, football has always been king, and the game once known as America’s favorite pastime had languished in the doldrums.

That was until sports betting. 

Now I can’t get enough. I love spending the morning looking into pitching matchups to see who is going to lock things down, or alternatively, who is going to get destroyed by the opposition team’s sluggers. I love following accounts like @would_it_dong on Twitter to learn how a home run in Chicago would be a flyout in 29 other ballparks. I love the effect the altitude level at Coors Field in Colorado has on the total runs scored in a game. And I just love big dingers.

With the NBA Finals finishing up in mid July, MLB has taken center stage for a seven-week period between the final buzzer in Milwaukee and the first kick off in Tampa Bay next Thursday. The sport feels like it’s been rejuvenated, finding new fans in bettors, quite simply because it was the only game in town. 

“I always thought baseball was boring until the playoffs,” said Marcus Phelps, aka @TheMisterMarcus on Twitter, when asked if he had become more interested in the game now that he could bet on it.

“I’m also from Indiana. We don’t have a team so there was no emotional attachment, but obviously, being able to bet now is a game changer.”

Things were tough in the beginning, though. With limited props available in comparison to the NBA, bettors were challenged with finding value in betting markets where registering a hit was less common than draining a three-point shot.

But then in late July, home run parlays rose to prominence.  

The biggest hit this summer came in late July via Knoxville, Tennessee, when Brandon Patteson, known online under the handle @WacPatty, strung together an obscene five-leg HR parlay involving Wilson Contreras, Jesse Winkler, Austin Meadows, Joc Pederson and Yordan Alvarez. The monster ticket with odds of +48491 paid out close to $25,000 from just a $50 wager. 

Speaking to Dimers.com, the 34-year-old who played baseball as a kid and lists it as being one of the first sports he ever bet on more than four years ago, says that the huge windfall came as he was nursing a hangover after a big night.

“I was not really paying attention at first on my bets and was trying to recover from the night before.

“I was occasionally checking my phone to see if my players had hit, and one by one they had hit… I was sweating Joc Pederson because he had one more at-bat in the 9th.

“Talk about some luck on your side… He ended up smacking one in the 9th, so it came down to Yordan (Alvarez). Sure enough Yordan hit and I was going nuts and had to check the box scores in each game to make sure it was real.

“My hangover immediately faded away,” said the Tennessee bettor who also capped off the day with another home run parlay that paid out $3900.

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While Patteson credits some luck being on your side as a prerequisite for success with home run parlays, paying attention to things like pitching and hitter matchups, as well as researching ballparks that are homer friendly can set you up for a good bet.

Once the betting community found their way, the HR parlay became the hottest bet of the summer, with regular big hits across the internet filling up timelines. 

The peak of the baseball betting craze occurred in August when the first ever Field of Dreams Game resulted in some large wins when eight dingers were clobbered in a 9-8 White Sox win over the Yankees. 

The game, which was viewed by 5.9 million people, was also the most watched baseball game since 2005. Baseball was back, albeit temporarily.

With College Football now back on our screens and the NFL not too far away, we head into September, a mere matter of weeks away from Fall and the turning of the leaves, and even though there is still more than a month before the playoffs, it feels like the community’s fleeting fling with the MLB may be ending as bettors turn their attention and their bankrolls over to their trusty pigskin.

“This is fun, but I will be taking my talents to the NFL,” Phelps says when asked whether he’s going to continue to bet on baseball once the cut and thrust of the football season is underway.

“It’s just easier to predict when teams play once a week.” Marcus said.

As Dr Seuss once mused, “Don’t cry that it’s over. Smile that it happened.”

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No matter if you are diverting your attention elsewhere for the colder months, or if you’re staying on board until the end of the World Series, we’ll always have those memories of Vladdy Jr blasting off in Toronto’s makeshift home in Buffalo, we’ll always have Shohei Ohtani turning heads with his exploits, we’ll always have those nights where the guy we bet on the night before hits a homer the next day because of course he would do that. We’ll always have Eloy Jiménez. 

Summer dreams ripped at the seams. But, oh, those summer niiiiiiiiighhhhhh-tttttttttts.

Dimers will of course be riding out the MLB season with daily baseball picks each and every day.