There are two reasons I’m not going to buy any Powerball tickets this week.

The first: I don’t think my chances of winning justify risking even a dollar of my hard-earned money.

But the second part of my rationale is less traditional. I’m abstaining from gambling to honor Jim Bottomley, a member of baseball’s Hall of Fame who came to my attention earlier this month when research I was doing revealed some significant similarities between his impressive exploits and the remarkable career of the late Bill Buckner.

Abstaining from legalized (or, for that matter, less than lawful) gambling isn’t ill-considered or impulsive on my part. This isn’t merely a one-week boycott. On those extremely rare, every-other-decade occasions when I’m tempted to buy a ticket, I think back to my father referring to a lottery as a “Stupidity Tax” when the state where we lived instituted one 47 years ago. It’s been difficult to forget or ignore that particular bit of wisdom, even though the person who provided it has been dead for over four decades.

The probability of winning Powerball’s grand prize, one with a dollar figure that generally contains a staggering eight digits to the left side of the decimal point, isn’t great. The exact chances are an infinitesimal one in 292,201,338, and that’s according to the Powerball’s own website.

How unlikely is that? Well, according to an article published earlier this year on North Jersey.com, among 13 out-of-the-ordinary things more likely to occur than collecting the Powerball jackpot are: getting struck by lightning, dying from a bee sting, getting audited by the IRS, finding a pearl in an oyster shell, and getting killed by a vending machine. None of that knowledge has changed any of my pre-existing behaviors, aside from my recent decisions to steer clear of vending machines, and to start roaming the beach at night looking for oyster shells.

According to information I know is reliable because I found it on the internet, the likelihood of my dating a supermodel is one in 880,000. That’s practically a sure thing compared to the odds of winning the lottery. My chances of being a professional basketball player are one in 11,771, or at least they were four decades and one titanium hip ago. There’s a one in 649,739 chance that I’ll get a royal flush on the opening deal of a poker game, and that probability increases if deuces are wild.

But the mountainous odds against collecting whatever percentage of the Powerball jackpot would remain after taxes is the lesser of my two reasons for passing on this week’s drawing. Humanity in general and baseball fans in particular should be keeping Jim Bottomley in their thoughts this week.

“Sunny Jim,” who got his nickname from his perpetually upbeat disposition, plied his trade in the major leagues from 1922-1937 for the St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds, and St. Louis Browns. In 1928 he was the National League’s Most Valuable Player, leading the league in home runs and runs batted in. His skills were such that he was inducted into the sport’s Hall of Fame in 1974, although that honor didn’t come until 15 years after his death.

But why honor Bottomley? Why not some better-known baseball immortal, like Cy Young or Ted Williams? Or maybe a living Hall of Famer, like Carl Yastrzemski or Jim Rice?

Because what’s happening to Jim Bottomley today occurred to Babe Ruth on Feb. 23, 2002, befell Roberto Clemente on May 16, 2011, and happened to Thurman Munson on Sept. 27, 2011.

Jim Bottomley’s 21,781-day life concluded Dec. 11, 1959, exactly 21,781 days ago today.

That’s right. Today Jim Bottomley has been dead for exactly as long as he was alive.

Paying tribute to someone whose nickname came about as a result of his being nice to everyone all the time is a lot more sensible than contemplating one’s miniscule chances of dating a supermodel, let alone winning the lottery.

On the subject of unlikely occurrences: is winning the Powerball jackpot any less likely than seeing Jim Bottomley’s name in two separate editions of the Journal Tribune in the same 27-day period?

I suppose that relatively few people have much interest in reading about Jim Bottomley at all, let alone twice in one month. But I’ll bet fans of baseball history will enjoy it, and the same goes for math nerds. And for people who fall into both of those categories, well, today’s their lucky day!

Maybe they should go buy a lottery ticket.

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