Welcome one and all to ODD BALLS. We aren’t the newsletter you want. We’re the newsletter you need. The one you deserve.
We’re Dan Holmes and Cole Rush, freelance writers in the gambling industry. For every story we write, many more end up on the cutting room floor. That’s where Oddballs comes in. Once a month, each of us will bring you a unique story related to sports, betting, or online gambling from an angle you may not have considered. Once-dead ideas will have new life, and the intersections of our many passions will come to the forefront. Questions? No? Cool, moving on.
Grab your goggles and hammer on your helmet; this is ODD BALLS.
Meet The Odd Ball: Dan Holmes
Dan Holmes is a prolific writer, and I promise he didn’t tell me to say that. The man knows his stuff, and by “stuff” I mean baseball, gambling, baseball, Michigan, and baseball.
Dan brings a unique and pithy voice to every article he writes, even when he covers America’s most boring pastime. Odd Balls critics wonder how he and Cole even managed to forge a friendship, given Cole’s singular disdain for all things related to the ballpark with the exception of hot dogs. When foremost scientists tried to make sense of this entropic anomaly, all but one went crazy (the last one quit science forever and moved to California, where she now films longboarding lifestyle TikTok videos).
You can find Dan’s work at BaseballEgg, BasketballEgg, HockeyEgg, Gaming Today, MLive, and PennLive. He has also written for MLB.com, BaseballHall.org, Detroit News, the Wall Street Journal, and (reportedly) dozens of other websites he insists are “very real.”
Dan’s pen has struck the page for two books: Ty Cobb: A Biography (I disappointingly discovered it had nothing to do with beanie babies or corn, a double whammy) and The Great Baseball Argument Settling Book. He will strike a third time in 2024 when Baseball’s Greatest Players Remembered, Ranked, and Revealed releases. Does that mean he’s out? Does publishing work like baseball? Time will tell.
Finally, Dan is a contributor to the Society for American Baseball Research biography project and has worked at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
He is (and I say this with the utmost sincerity) an extraordinarily talented dude, and I am so excited to work on this newsletter with him.
Dan’s favorite movie is Seabiscuit, but not the one you’re thinking of. Seabiscuit is an arthouse film Dan wrote, directed, produced, and starred in. His neighbor filmed it on a Motorola Razr for twenty bucks. The movie’s entire 120-minute runtime features Dan hurling Red Lobster cheddar bay biscuits into Lake Michigan.
Meet The Odd Ball: Cole Rush
Anyone who meets Cole Rush will never forget it. That's because he’s a pest. But unlike most pests, like bed bugs and termites, Cole can pester you with his words. Which in this case is an excellent thing, because he’s a wordsmith. Or, if you’re in the U.K., that’s wordsmythe.
Cole is an expert in the gaming industry. He’s written scads of articles and feature stories on that topic for a multitude of websites and publications. His writing is informative and entertaining, which is unusual in an industry where creativity is often shunned.
His ability to create copy efficiently is unrivaled in the industry. He’s also an accomplished editor, and it was in that role that he met Dan Holmes, the other Odd Ball. Their friendship is tenuous, and perhaps fictional. But never boring.
Cole has earned a byline at Gaming Today, Play Illinois, and iGaming Business. He’s also contributed engaging book reviews and pop culture pieces for Reactor (formerly Tor.com) and The Quill To Live. You can occasionally hear him discussing film and TV on Ian Simmons’ Kicking the Seat podcast. Cole is supremely unqualified for such appearances, but he has fun with ‘em anyway. If you aren’t amused when you read Cole’s articles, you probably aren’t looking at his profile photo.
Recently, Cole was a guest on the nationally syndicated game show Password, where he sat uncomfortably close to Jimmy Fallon and Heidi Klum. The rumors of a restraining order are unsubstantiated.
Cole lives in Chicago with his wife. They are expecting their first child in 2024, hopefully with the trademark Rush mop of ginger hair on her little head.
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