This is one installment in a team effort by The Cleveland Fan, highlighting the top local sports figures by jersey number. Please weigh in with your thoughts, in the Boards. As David Letterman would say, “For entertainment purposes only; please, no wagering.”

Almost. 

There was a lot of almost to the career of Rik Aalbert Blyleven’s baseball career and his post-baseball career.  Blyleven almost won 300 games, and that’s a big deal in some circles.  He was almost in the Hall of Fame for many years, but you might also say he was almost shunned from Cooperstown forever over the aforementioned shortage of wins.  His 287 wins were dismissed by the numbers snobs that vote for candidacy to Cooperstown, even though people who take careful looks at the number said they were wrong.  The two-time World Series Champion was finally inducted in Cooperstown when cooler heads finally prevailed.

The Holland-born prankster that was known around Major League Baseball as the “Frying Dutchman” for his pyromaniac act with teammates’ shoelaces in the bullpen played 22 seasons, and spent almost a quarter of it with the Indians.  His time in Cleveland saw him win 48 games and lose 37, but career seemed to gain a second win when he was on his way out, via trade with his original team, the Minnesota Twins, 1985.

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This is one installment in a team effort by The Cleveland Fan, highlighting the top local sports figures by jersey number. Please weigh in with your thoughts, in the Boards. As David Letterman would say, “For entertainment purposes only; please, no wagering.”


Herb Score’s selection as this town’s best ever #27 should serve as evidence that greatness is not measured in years. Score’s star burned white-hot for two seasons as a Cleveland Indian, earning him favorable comparisons with his legendary teammate Bob Feller, and widespread predictions that he would become one of the greatest left-handed pitchers ever to play the game.

Score set a rookie record for strikeouts on his way to the Rookie of the Year award in 1955. He overshadowed another rookie pitcher who came into the league that same year...a Dodger lefty named Sandy Koufax. He was a 20-game winner by the age of 23. Leo Durocher called him “the fastest pitcher I’ve seen in 20 years”.  That his career was brief made it no less brilliant.

Few Cleveland fans today are even aware that Score wore #27, because they know Herb Score mostly as a man without a uniform...as the radio voice of the Tribe, from their earliest recollection up until his retirement after the 1997 World Series. But perhaps the best known fact of all about Score is that his highly promising baseball career was started on its tragic downward trajectory when he was struck in the face by a line drive off the bat of the Yankees’ Gil McDougald early in the 1957 season.

Within moments of the ball striking Score in the eye, his career, if not his life, was in dire jeopardy. McDougald was disconsolate afterwards, saying he would quit the game if Score lost his eye. Fans from all over the country sent their best wishes. People everywhere felt sorry for the young Tribe lefty.

Herb Score was never one of them.

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Many professional bettors are starting to adapt in order to get better situations at +EV. As I’ve talked about before, +EV is expected value, and that should always be a positive amount. One of the ways that bettors are doing this is by focusing on half wagers instead of full game plays. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to get a full game effort out of basketball teams, especially late in the season. The obvious move to counteract that would be to look at bets one half at a time.

These do take knowledge of season-long trends and possibly a feel for the game, only gained by watching it. If a star player is injured in the first half and is going to try and play through it in the second half, you won’t be holding a full game wager and hoping for the best. You can simply make a second half play at +EV with the information that you know.

A lot of times, oddsmakers have set lines for second halves. In a lot of cases, the second half lines for sides will try to mirror the full-game line as much as possible. If the Knicks are a five-point favorite and the game is tied at halftime, the second half line will probably come out around Knicks -5. The books don’t want to give hedging options or middles. If the second half line came out Knicks -8, somebody holding Knicks -5 could come back on the other team and have a three-point middle, encompassing some of the NBA’s key numbers.

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This is one installment in a team effort by The Cleveland Fan, highlighting the top local sports figures by jersey number. Please weigh in with your thoughts, in the Boards. As David Letterman would say, “For entertainment purposes only; please, no wagering.”

In Cleveland in March, two songs from the recent holiday season can seem oddly appropriate. The significance of each is diametrically opposed to the other.

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