Online gambling can be done in the blink of an eye. Baseball moves along at a snail’s pace. Combine the two, and you open up a world of possibilities for live betting on MLB games.

A sharp bettor can really clean up in these situations. Consider Sunday night’s matchup between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. The game was tied going into the bottom of the ninth inning; you can picture all the Yankees fans watching the game, itching to bet on New York to win the game before it went into extra innings. It didn’t. Nor did the Red Sox win in the top of the 10th.

Beating the betting public is still the name of the game; live betting puts pressure on bettors to make choices, widening the gap between sharps and squares. Live betting also offers that many more chances to build a bankroll. The more, the merrier.

So much for chalk. After Sunday’s action, these were the six MLB division leaders, with their won-loss records:

AL East: Toronto Blue Jays, Baltimore Orioles (7-5)
AL Central: Chicago White Sox (7-4)
AL West: Oakland Athletics (8-5)
NL East: Florida Marlins (7-5)
NL Central: St. Louis Cardinals (9-4)
NL West: Arizona Diamondbacks (9-3)

Just like we predicted, right? Never mind that the Orioles were 50-1 at press time to win their division. How about the Sox (6-1), the Cards (13-2), the A’s (9-1) and the Marlins (25-1)? The only division favorite on the good foot right now is Arizona at 5-4 odds.

If you leave out the Blue Jays (0.9 units in the black at press time), these are the six most profitable teams in the majors, raking in well over 20 units in profit for anyone brave enough to bet on this dubious assortment. Just beware of the small sample size before breaking open your piggy bank.

Major League Baseball can be forgiven for being one of the most anal sports organizations on the planet. Baseball is a numbers game, after all, and makes billions of dollars off the obsession over keeping score. However dickish the Roger Maris home-run asterisk was, it did have some statistical merit.
The career home-run record set by Barry Bonds is more problematic. Any talk of putting an asterisk next to his 762 (and counting) homers, or to wipe them from the record books altogether, is purely a moral issue. And to do so requires first and foremost indisputable proof that Bonds broke the MLB rules regarding steroid use.
Track and field athletes like Marion Jones have had career achievements officially rendered null and void because of steroids, so there is precedent for MLB officials to do the same with Bonds. But their best hope for redemption is if Alex Rodriguez breaks the record and stays out of trouble.

Is it a surprise that the Boston Red Sox came back from a 3-1 deficit to win the ALCS over Cleveland? Maybe not. They were favored in every single game, after all. So unless you include Fausto Carmona’s poor pitching – again, not a shock considering his youth and his opponents – the National League is our source for wackiness in the 2007 playoffs.

It started with the elimination of the Chicago Cubs. OK, we’ve heard this story before. But the Cubs were handed a very beatable Arizona team with one reliable starting pitcher (Brandon Webb), and they couldn’t get the job done.

The Philadelphia Phillies, meanwhile, had the best offense in the National League with 892 runs, second only to the Yankees in the majors. But they could only muster eight runs in three games against Colorado’s fair-to-middling pitching. Including one game at Coors Field.

Least surprising? What’s happening with the already-eliminated Yankees is more interesting than the games themselves.

Been playing the underdogs so far in the baseball playoffs? Good work, at least after the first four games. Puppies went 2-2, with Colorado winning twice in Philly to make handicappers a quick half-unit.

No reason to stop now. We were still waiting at press time for a line on Game 2 between the Yankees and Cleveland, but check out the other ALDS matchup: Los Angeles (+140) against Boston. The Angels are sending Kelvim Escobar to the mound; Boston replies with Daisuke Matsuzaka.

Dice-K’s only got a 4.42 xFIP after a lousy second half of the season (5.19 ERA in old-school terms). Escobar is at 4.31 xFIP and was strong all year, at least until September when he honked three starts. As long as Escobar’s shoulder inflammation has truly subsided, the Angels have the edge in starting pitching Friday. Amazing what you can buy for +140 in the MLB playoffs.