The Bodog oddsmakers are having a hard time choosing between the New York Mets and the Chicago Cubs in the NL Pennant race.

Bodog has both the Mets and the Cubs listed as 5/2 favorites to capture the pennant, despite the fact that neither team is a lock to even make the playoffs. The Mets have a three-game lead on the Phillies in the NL East, but could get a boost with Pedro Martinez nearing a return. If Pedro can harness any of his old abilities it could give the Mets a winning rotation of Martinez, Tom Glavine, John Maine and Oliver Perez, especially with the Mets’ powerful offense backing them up.

The Cubs’ playoff chances took a huge hit when offensive catalyst Alfonso Soriano went down. If the Cubs can make a playoff run, their starters – led by ace Carlos Zambrano and followed by Ted Lilly and Jason Marquis – can match up with the Mets.

He hits it high… he hits it deep… way deep.

So Barry Bonds is now and forevermore to be thought of as the all-time MLB home run king – at least until Alex Rodriguez or someone else breaks the record. But Bonds had other memorable moments on his way to No. 756. Here are 10 of the most notable.

May 30, 1986: Bonds makes his MLB debut in center field for the Pittsburgh Pirates, at home against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Batting leadoff, Bonds goes 0-for-5 and strikes out three times. But he also gets a walk. He’ll get another 2,500 or so after that.

May 31, 1986: Bonds gets his first major-league hit, a double off Dodgers pitcher Rick Honeycutt. Honeycutt was caught cheating six years earlier when he taped a thumbtack to his hand while pitching for the Seattle Mariners.

June 4, 1986: Bonds goes deep off Craig McMurtry of the Atlanta Braves, his first MLB dinger. The solo shot was part of a 4-for-5 night for Bonds at old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium.

November 19, 1990: Bonds is named the National League MVP by the Baseball Writers of America Association. He’ll collect six more of those awards.

May 4, 1992: People names Bonds one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the World. It can only go downhill from here.

Oct. 17, 1992: Game 7 of the NLCS. The Pirates are up 2-1 in the bottom of the ninth with two outs. The Braves have loaded the bases. Francisco Cabrera lines a single to left. Bonds tries to throw Sid Bream out at home plate, but Bream barely makes it in safe with the winning run as the Braves go on to the World Series.

December 8, 1992: Bonds signs as a free agent with the San Francisco Giants. The Pirates haven’t had a winning season since.

August 23, 1998: Bonds hits his 400th career home run off Kirt Ojala of the Florida Marlins to become the only player ever to hit 400 homers and steal 400 bases. Meanwhile, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa steal the spotlight with their quest to break Roger Maris’ single-season record of 61 (no asterisk).

October 5, 2001: Bonds goes deep twice off Dodgers starter Chan Ho Park, Nos. 71 and 72 of the season, to break McGwire’s MLB record.

March 2, 2004: The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Bonds received steroids from BALCO Laboratories.

Who can forget last season’s Cinderella Story – the Detroit Tigers – who went from pretenders to contenders and almost brought a World Series title back to Motown for the first time since 1984. Things are looking good for the Tigers this season and with a little luck they could finish up on top overall. But there are a number of teams that could make a Tigers-like turnaround.

Look for the Chicago Cubs to be one of those teams.

The Cubs can’t finish any worse than they did last season (last place overall in the NL), so they have nowhere to go but up. They scored big in the free agent market during the offseason and appear to have what it takes to possibly contend in the NL Central. Alfonso Soriano and Cliff Floyd have added some much-needed power, and the Cubs have improved their rotation behind Carlos Zambrano with Ted Lilly and Jason Marquis.

Another team to watch is the defending champion St. Louis Cardinals. They’ve made further improvements to their roster by acquiring more talent at the trade deadline.

There’s also the up-and-coming Milwaukee Brewers, which has one of the best young rotations in the game. The addition of veteran Jeff Suppan along with holdovers Chris Capuano and Dave Bush does give the Brewers three reliable arms behind Sheets. Offensively the Brewers are packed with potential that includes plenty of pop.

In the AL the team to watch out for is the Cleveland Indians. Cleveland finished a disappointing fourth in the AL Central last season, but this season they should challenge the rest of the heavy hitters in the division (which includes Detroit, Minnesota and the White Sox) for the division crown. One of Cleveland’s biggest problems last year was their bullpen, which they tried to improve by adding Joe Borowski and Roberto Hernandez. The Indians have a number of heavy hitters, including Grady Sizemore, Travis Hafner and Victor Martinez, but it may all come down to the ability of Andy Marte, Jhonny Peralta and Josh Barfield as the regular season winds down.

Now batting clean-up for the Texas Rangers: No. 21, Sammy Sosa.

It took a while for the Rangers to find a place for Sammy Sosa – 18 years, in fact. Slammin’ Sammy was a skinny prospect out of the Dominican Republic when he made his major-league debut for Texas back in 1989. He was dealt to the Chicago White Sox after 25 unimpressive games. The White Sox didn’t see much in Sosa, either. He was shipped crosstown to the Cubs in a package for the fading George Bell. That worked out pretty well for the Northsiders.

Sosa, however, would eventually have a Bell-like collapse of his own. After 13 seasons with the Cubs, he was a bust as a Baltimore Oriole, lasting just one year before becoming a free agent at the end of the 2005 campaign. And when the Washington Nationals only offered a minor-league deal for 2006, Sosa declined, apparently content to ride off into the sunset.

Or not. Sosa did ink a minor-league contract with the Rangers, one laden with incentives. Good choice; playing in the bandbox known as the Ballpark in Arlington (1.013 park factor) is much more appealing than Washington’s RFK Stadium (0.881 park factor). Sosa also has plenty of protection in the batting order with the Rangers, and the year off appears to have done him some good at age 38.

But let’s not get carried away. As nostalgic as it is to see Sosa hitting home runs again (who else could have gotten away with corked bats and the taint of steroid allegations?), he’s nowhere near the Sammy of old. The 2007 model has a .856 OPS with seven dingers after 23 games. That’s pretty close to what we saw in his last Cubs season back in 2004 – still productive, though, and that’s what counts for Rangers fans right now.

Interested in MLB player props? Check these out.

Winning a World Series doesn’t have the street cred it used to.

The St. Louis Cardinals are 14-1 on the futures market to defend their championship. The New York Mets (6-1) and the Los Angeles Dodgers (10-1) are higher up on the food chain, while the Chicago Cubs (15-1) are nipping at their heels. The Cubs? The last time they won the World Series was the same year the first Model-T rolled off the line.

Nobody gave the Cards much respect last year – except handicappers, of course. They saw established value in Jeff Suppan (27.0 VORP) and upside in rookie Anthony Reyes and the enigmatic Jeff Weaver. All three came through in the crunch, as did Chris Carpenter, the 2005 Cy Young winner. Carpenter matched that performance with a 67.8 VORP, but his 15-8 record (sandbagged by 10 no-decisions in 32 starts) kept him out of the limelight in 2006.

The rotation looks a little different this year. Carpenter and Reyes remain, joined by Kip Wells, Braden Looper and converted reliever Adam Wainwright. So far, it’s the newcomers holding things together. Carpenter is battling elbow problems and is expected to remain out of action until May. That’s one of the main reasons St. Louis is plugging along at 6-9 thus far.

Another reason: Albert Pujols isn’t even hitting his weight. His .730 OPS is way below last year’s 1.102 mark, which was actually an improvement over his 2005 MVP season when Pujols posted a 1.039 OPS. That slump isn’t going to last. Neither will Jim Edmonds’ (.503 OPS) or Scott Rolen’s (.576 OPS). That’s the heart of the batting order right there. Chris Duncan (.981 OPS) is holding the fort in what promises to be a breakout campaign. Handicappers should hope St. Louis continues to drag its heels for a while, because when the Cards come back, money will be made.

Swing, bettor; bettor, swing.

We’ve got the NBA postseason square in our sights. Some of us are even betting hockey now that the playoffs have begun. Good times. But are you betting on baseball? Perhaps you should. It’s one of the simplest pro sports to handicap – provided you aren’t married to the idea of a pointspread.

If you’re already laying coin on the NHL, you probably know what we mean. The moneyline is to baseball (and hockey) what the pointspread is to football. You’re betting on a team to win straight up. To make up for the difference between the favorite and the underdog, payouts are higher on the dog. Piece of cake.

On Wednesday, the Cardinals were –150 favorites in Pittsburgh against the Pirates (+135). The minus sign indicates you bet that number ($150) to win $100. The plus sign indicates you bet $100 to win that number ($135). Handicappers will often look for their value picks among the underdogs, rather than risk “eating chalk” by betting on the faves for less reward.

Although the low scoring in baseball games takes the spread out of the equation, it does make betting the totals more interesting. Your totals generally fall in the 7-12 range, and since baseball is so number-oriented, you can cobble together a list of relevant stats, do some math, and come up feeling more confident about your “over” or “under” pick than you do for NBA matchups.

A statistics-based analytical process is also the cornerstone of playing the MLB market. Baseball is a game of individual outcomes – the team dynamic is almost nonexistent on the diamond. You can project how each player will perform in a game, add them up, and pick a winner. But that takes a lot of time, and time is money. Better to focus on the starting pitchers, with supporting research on the bullpens, the batting orders, the ballpark in use and the umpires working the game.

Don’t forget, a game takes place in an environment, and that environment affects the game. Think Lambeau Field in December. Now think Wrigley Field in April.

Yankees, Red Sox. Red Sox, Yankees. Ho-hum.

Check out the 2007 World Series futures market. It’s the same old song and dance – New York and Boston are the co-favorites at 7-2. For a couple of teams with serious questions in their pitching rotations, those are lousy odds.

The Yankees, of course, have the biggest payroll in the majors and a batting order that rivals anything ever assembled. But after Mike Mussina and Andy Pettitte, where is the pitching going to come from? It might have to be later in the season, in the form of ageless free agent Roger Clemens and minor-league prospect Philip Hughes. The margin of error there is too big to generate confidence in handicappers.

As for the Red Sox, they appear to have a winner in Daisuke Matsuzaka. But their quest for a closer was so futile, they decided to put Jonathan Papelbon back in that role, weakening their rotation in the process. Health issues will always be a concern with the likes of Curt Schilling and Josh Beckett; for that matter, you could say the same for half the team.

There are plenty of familiar teams getting short odds for the championship – possibly none less deserving than the Chicago White Sox at 9-1. The Pale Hose are my favorite candidate for Meltdown of the Year. Their pitching is nowhere near as good as their 2005 World Series team, and it should be just a matter of time before the futility of manager Ozzie Guillen’s “small ball” tactics are finally realized on a larger scale.

If these teams aren’t going to the Fall Classic, who is? The value is in the dark horses, and I’m looking at the Arizona Diamondbacks (30-1) to face the Cleveland Indians (13-1). Cleveland doesn’t have as much value as I would have hoped after last year’s 78-84 finish, but Arizona looks quite tasty with plenty of upside and a relatively easy NL West to conquer. Plus, Randy Johnson is back where he belongs – well, that would be Seattle, but you get the idea.