Blown Strike Call On Johnny Damon Costs Gamblers Thousands

The Detroit Tigers and Johnny Damon were furious on Saturday evening after umpire Gary Cederstrom punched out Damon on a 3-2 pitch with the bases loaded and the Tigers down a run in the ninth inning. Damon and manager Jim Leyland insisted that the pitch was not a strike.

Now that Cederstrom has seen the replay on television, he agrees. Cederstrom took the rare step of acknowledging a mistake, but that will not change the outcome of the game. That one single call not only has the Tigers and Damon upset, but thousands of gamblers as well.

The easiest place to see where gamblers could have a gripe was in the game itself. Any bettors who placed a wager on the Tigers to win against Atlanta Saturday, lost their bets. Had the pitch been called correctly, the game would have been tied, and possibly Detroit would have won, changing the outcome of the bets.

"It was a sweeping pitch, going away from Damon," said Cederstrom, after the game, speaking with reporters from The Detroit Free Press. "It looked good coming in, then broke late." My timing was fast. Whenever you have fast timing as an umpire, you usually get in trouble."

The bigger picture for gamblers comes in the form of season win and loss totals for these two teams. Sports books have an uncanny knack of placing the totals within a game of the actual ending total before the season starts. If the Tigers fall one win short of that season betting total, thousands of gamblers could end up with losing proposition bets.

On the other side, those gamblers who bet on Atlanta to win less that their predicted total, may end up losing their bets by one win. Either way, Cederstrom's call, unlike that of Jim Joyce that cost Armando Galarraga his perfect game, could prove costly for baseball bettors around the world.

June 28, 2010
Posted By Vincent Tapoglia III
Staff Editor, CasinoGamblingWeb.com
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