My boyfriend’s best friend is so lucky when he gamles. He seems to win all the time.  At the bar the other night, he let it slip to my husband that he wins so much because he found this sports betting software that he uses all the time.  It gives him the best odds on any sport and even explains sports handicapping, which is something my boyfriend could never quite understand.   He said with this system, he doesn’t even have to study the newspapers or listen to the radio to know what each team in doing.  This friend likes basketball betting, football betting and most of all baseball betting.    He likes baseball the best because he always had dreams of becoming a baseball player himself, although he wasn’t talented enough to make any team and now he is passed his prime.  He still is on a softball team along with my husband. He actually won sport tickets to the Super Bowl one year.  Actually, he tries to get people to bet on the softball teams in their league.  I guess any kind of betting will make him happy, especially if he is able to win. I know this system wouldn’t give info about his softball team, but this guy is really lucky and everyone hates to take the chance to bet against him.

I grew up in Chicago and was fortunate enough to witness sports history seemingly year after year.  Whether they were down by twenty points in the fourth quarter, needed a last second shot, or just had to hang onto a lead for the last minute, the Chicago Bulls almost always pulled off the win.  It helped tremendously having Michael Jordan on the team.  Having the greatest player to ever play the game of basketball always helps.  Sometimes, he would simply force the Bulls to win by sheer force of his will power. 

            Watching him play was a true privilege.  He made spectacular shots, stole the show with slam dunks, scored a lot of points, played great defense, and made his teammates better just be being out on the floor with him.  But he wasn’t alone.  Phil Jackson ranks as one of the greatest coaches in NBA history and Scottie Pippen was a fantastic Hall of Fame worthy player in his own right as well.  There was also Horace Grant, BJ Armstrong, John Paxson, Steve Kerr, and the always interesting, yet disturbing Dennis Rodman. 

            They had two three-peats of championships during the 90s and might have had even more if Michael Jordan hadn’t briefly retired or if the owners’ lockout hadn’t forced the dynasty to be broken up prematurely.  Still, they thoroughly dominated the decade, which was a relief to Chicago sports fans who had endured years of the Cubs, Sox, and Blackhawks’ failures.  Though they had won a Superbowl during the 80s, the Bears had even tailed off in quality and were hard to watch at times.  But the Bulls almost always delivered. 

            Then when the team got broken up, I drifted away as a fan.  It became almost painful to watch the new generation of Bulls players struggling to merely win a game when Jordan and the others had cut through the competition like they were nothing.  It’s hard to go from having the greatest team in the world, maybe even the great team ever, to having just another team of youngsters trying to mature. 

            Film critic Gene Siskel was even a huge fan of the Chicago Bulls and used to write articles for the Chicago Tribune sports section about what he was supposed to do as a fan now that his team had broken up and was never coming back, not really.  As fans do, they drifted off and some went over to the White Sox who finally won a world series in the new millennium and others want to go after Steve Bartman, believing he and he alone had caused the Cubs to collapse in the play-offs.  And the Bears always have their fans, no matter how poor or mediocre they were.  But they finally reached the Superbowl again in 2007 and lost, though the fact that they got there at least showed an enormous amount of improvement. 

            The Bulls have been relegated to the back of the Chicago sports scene, but Michael Jordan’s statue still stands outside the United Center.  No one will ever forget his team, even if a new generation of the Bulls rise up to a championship. 

It would be interesting to learn how the sport of football in the U.S. evolved, and why it’s called football when that term is actually used for soccer everywhere else in the world. Who decided that it would a brilliant idea to take the name of a sport already existing and apply it to a whole new sport? This is a sport that actually has very little to do with a foot connecting with a ball. It doesn’t really make that much sense when you really think about it. I actually don’t know the history of either football or soccer, so I’m making a lot of assumptions here. I wonder if anyone every gets it mixed up when they’re online betting sports trying to bet on football? That would be so terrible. Both sports have two teams whose goal is to get the ball to opposite sides of the field in order to score a goal. The difference is that with soccer (known as football by the rest of the world), you have to get the ball into the goal using mostly your feet, rarely your hands, and sometimes by bouncing it off parts of your body. With American football, you have to get the ball into the goal by using mostly your hands, very rarely your feet, and the only time you use your body is when you’re slamming into someone else with it.

I guess if you’re going to become addicted to something it may as well be sports betting. It can’t be worse than suffering from some other type of addiction, like crack. Can it? I mean, instead of being addicted to something that is either going to slowly kill you physically or suddenly kill you physically via an overdose, you’re addicted to something that’s draining your bank account, and possibly destroying your marriage, your career, and your family life. I suppose you can always file for bankruptcy, get another job, and get someone else to marry you. You can’t really repair your life if you get addicted to something that kills you. If I ever get into betting sports, it would probably be horse betting. I suppose it’s just because I like the fact that it involves animals, and the idea of going to a horse race is kind of cool since I’ve never been. I would love to have event tickets to a horse race. I wouldn’t even know where to begin, but I tend to have great beginner’s luck so I’d probably win in the beginning somehow then proceed to do something stupid, like get addicted and go lose my life savings, steal from relatives, pawn their furniture and jewelry, and finally achieve my lifelong dream of stardom by winding up on Intervention.

I am searching for a kayak; One that will fit in my garage and above my Subaru. I searched through my closet the other day looking for old sports stuff that I could sell in order to get a new kayak. I go on random spurts where I like one sport for an indeterminate amount of time. Before my new kayak spurt I was into mountain biking. I still am, but I live by the water and I want to learn how to kayak. Before mountain biking I was into rock climbing. I could probably sell that gear for some money, not enough for a kayak but it is a start. Besides, how am I supposed to find a natural rock climbing setting in a big city. I forgot that I had a wooden closet organizer full of my sporting stuff in the garage. I think I probably have enough stuff to sell in there to buy myself a kayak, a rack for my Subaru, and some paddles, and maybe even a life jacket. I am never good at a sport when I first start it but I do it with all of my heart until I am. I attempted skydiving for a good six months. I wanted to eventually go by myself, which I probably could have, if it hadn’t been for my tandem instructor who knew how clumsy I was. Maybe one day I will skydive alone. Until then I am going down some white water in a sexy blue kayak.