When the baseball season began, depending on where you shopped, you could get 100-1 odds or better from Las Vegas sports-books on the Atlanta Braves to win the World Series.

Or, if you were really into longshots, the price on the Minnesota Twins was even fatter, 120-1 in some places, up to as much as 200-1 in others.

They're considerably lower now--4-1 on the Braves, 9-5 on the Twins--after Atlanta and Minnesota executed the ultimate baseball turnaround, going from worst to first.

Never in baseball history had one team made such a dramatic reversal. And this season, there were two.

Hope For The Future

What does that mean for perpetual also-rans like Cleveland, which lost a franchise record 105 games this season, and Houston, which finished at 65-97, the same record the Braves had a year ago?

"I want our guys to realize what can happen in a short period of time," Houston manager Art Howe said. "I think what they've done is exciting for everyone, especially for us. They basically built from within to turn things around, just like we expect to do."

The Indians are taking the same approach with the youngest team in baseball at an average of 26.1. There's a new ballpark being built and a new general manager, John Hart, and new president Rick Bay, hoping to breathe new life into the franchise.

When Vegas posted the preseason odds on the Twins and Braves, they seemed on target because, frankly, these teams had precious little to recommend them.

Consider their 1990 resumes.

Both had finished in last place, the Braves with a 65-97 record that left them an imposing 26 games behind Cincinnati, the Twins 74-88, 29 games back of Oakland. These teams looked like candidates for Dante's Inferno--"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!"

Still, the rules require that teams show up each year, so the Braves and Twins made their obligatory appearances this summer and quite suddenly they were no longer woe-begone clubs.

Minnesota not only won the AL West, it dominated the division, finishing eight games in front with a 95-67 record, a 30-game turnaround. And this was no pantywaist division either. For the first time in 22 years of division play, every team finished at .500 or above.

Atlanta gave baseball a legitimate down-to-the wire pennant race, beating Los Angeles in the final weekend and finishing at 94-68, a 29-game improvement.

General managers watched and admired the turnarounds of the Twins and Braves.