{"id":463,"date":"2008-07-21T19:00:30","date_gmt":"2008-07-22T00:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sidehike.net\/wp\/?p=463"},"modified":"2008-07-21T19:00:30","modified_gmt":"2008-07-22T00:00:30","slug":"tampa-bay-rays-due-for-historic-second-half-collapse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sidehike.net\/tampa-bay-rays-due-for-historic-second-half-collapse\/","title":{"rendered":"Tampa Bay Rays due for historic second half collapse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/sidehike\/2690955046\/\" title=\"Tampa Bay Rays due for historic second half collapse by sidehike, on Flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3041\/2690955046_d49b4cf5b5.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"334\" alt=\"Tampa Bay Rays due for historic second half collapse\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Anytime I go through Vegas I buy what I call &quot;trip insurance&quot; in the form of placing a couple of ridiculously stupid long-shot bets at the sports book. I figure as bad as the odds are, they&#8217;re still better than the odds of collecting on that junk the credit card companies and shady travel agents usually sell as &quot;trip insurance.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I last drove through Sin City on my way home from a wedding in California. It was part of the great <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sidehike.net\/roadtrip\/\">Road Trip of 2008<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Usually I just plunk down a couple of bucks on hard luck favorites like my dear Texas Rangers and Aggies. <\/p>\n<p>This time I also put down a ten spot on the Rays to win it all. They were showing the same odds as the Rangers (i.e. very bad) but I figured based on how hot a commodity their young pitchers were in my fantasy baseball leagues that even if they were a long, long way out they at least had to be better than my hometown team. <\/p>\n<p>Go figure, now halfway through the season they&#8217;re in first place in the AL East above the Red Sox and Yankees. <\/p>\n<p>But based on my historical luck, I think I can pretty safely say that the Rays will choke in the second half. Heck, Florida may even fall into the ocean taking the team with it. <\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s more like my luck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anytime I go through Vegas I buy what I call &quot;trip insurance&quot; in the form of placing a couple of ridiculously stupid long-shot bets at the sports book. I figure as bad as the odds are, they&#8217;re still better than the odds of collecting on that junk the credit card [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[49,79,109,161,193],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sidehike.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sidehike.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sidehike.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sidehike.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sidehike.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sidehike.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sidehike.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sidehike.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sidehike.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}