Santana shuts down Dodgers, Mets offense awakens
Baseball Betting Lines
07/24/2010 - Los Angeles, CA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Johan Santana silenced the Dodgers for seven innings, and New York's offense awoke from a two-week slumber in a 6-1 victory at Chavez Ravine.
The Mets were held to four runs or less in each of their previous 13 games, but a balanced attack with the bats and Santana's arm helped the club to their second win in nine games since the All-Star break.
Santana (8-5) surrendered just one run on five hits and a walk to go with four strikeouts in the win. The left-hander has gone at least seven frames and given up one run or less in his last five outings.
Jason Bay went 2-for-4 with three RBI, Ike Davis hit a solo home run, and Jose Reyes doubled, walked, stole a base and scored two runs for the victors.
Vicente Padilla (4-3) took the look despite allowing a mere two runs -- one earned -- on six hits in seven innings for Los Angeles, which won the opener of this four-game series, 2-0, on Thursday.
"Padilla pitched sensational. We just couldn't get any offense going. Santana works fast and you don't get many opportunities against him," Dodgers manager Joe Torre said. "We've been struggling offensively."
Reyes doubled leading off the game, moved to third on Luis Castillo's bunt single and scored when Blake DeWitt missed Russell Martin's throw to second on Castillo's steal attempt.
Davis crushed Padilla's 53-m.p.h. curve in the second to make it 2-0, though the Mets left a pair of runners in scoring position when Castillo grounded out to short. It was a close play at first, and New York manager Jerry Manuel was ejected by first base umpire Doug Eddings for arguing the call.
Santana used several terrific fielding plays behind him to maintain the lead early on, as Bay made a running catch while slamming into the left-field fence in the second, and Angel Pagan and Carlos Beltran each pulled off sliding grabs in the outfield a little later.
LA got its only run in the fifth, as Martin doubled leading off, advanced 90 feet on a groundout and scored on Jamey Carroll's sac fly.
The visitors pulled away in the eighth against the Dodgers' bullpen. James McDonald relieved Jeff Weaver after a pair of walks and yielded a sacrifice fly to David Wright for a 3-1 game. An intentional walk to Beltran was followed by Jack Taschner putting Davis on with another walk to load the bases.
Yet another pitching change saw Travis Schlichting come in to face Bay, who laced a liner to the right-field gap to clear the bags and send the Mets to a much-needed win.
"I felt I had good at-bats tonight, and it was nice to get good results in the eighth inning," recalled Bay. "That was big in a lot of ways."
Game Notes
Before the game, New York designated pitcher Fernando Nieve for assignment and recalled pitcher Manny Acosta from Triple-A Buffalo...Santana has been victorious in all four career starts against LA...Bobby Parnell and Francisco Rodriguez each threw a scoreless inning of relief for the Mets...Padilla was 3-0 with a 0.98 earned run average in his previous four starts coming in...Casey Blake had two of the Dodgers' five hits...The Mets had lost 10 of 14 games in Hollywood since the 2007 season.
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One of the biggest reasons
SPORTS BETTING - Tennis is an underrated and under-utilized bettors' sport.
Ten years ago, at just about this time, I called Alan Boston in Vegas and left him a voicemail that went something like this (abridged version): "Hey Alan, Chad Millman from ESPN The Magazine calling. I want to do a book about wise guys, you in?"
A couple weeks later I got a message back (abridged version): "I don't know, maybe," Boston said. "Call me and we'll talk about it. But not later today. I got $1,000 on Andre Agassi to win the French Open at 40-1, and he's in the finals."
Here's what happened next (abridged version): Agassi won his tourney. Boston won his $40,000. I wrote sportsbook.
In the ten years since, how much has been wagered on the big-time tennis events? Put it this way: The Nevada Gaming Commission doesn't even track the number year by year because it's so small.
"Tennis makes up about one-tenth of one percent of our take," says Lucky's bookmaking boss Jimmy Vaccaro. "The last big golf major we probably had $100,000 worth of bets. In tennis, we might have written two big tickets."
Tennis' lack of popularity amongst the American bettoratti is no surprise, really. For starters, the biggest sports betting holidays -- the Super Bowl, the NCAA tourney -- are must see TV. People, at least the degenerates I know, plan vacations around watching those events in Vegas sports books.
But Wimbledon? Doesn't exactly reel in the whales. "Seriously, it's the nuts as an event," says Boston. "But who even knows when it's on?"
Here's another reason that helps explain why golf gets traction, something I call "The Bubbe Theory." My Bubbe is pushing 95 and has cataracts so bad that, to her, even the most crystalline Chicago day is mostly cloudy. But she still listens to the Cubs games, and she still calls me in a fit if she disagrees with something Rick Telander writes in the Chicago Sun Times. She's a sports fan. If she doesn't know you, you're just filling a niche. And niche players, even historically good ones like Roger and Raf, don't drive betting volume. Only the highest profile names attract square money, which inflates wagering totals like a shot of saline to the lips. Bubbe, and the public, loved Agassi, tennis' last cross-the-rubicon, mainstream draw. She also has a crush on Tiger. She's given me standing orders to put a sawbuck on the big cat whenever I walk through a sports book (or mistakenly tap into one via my Internet machine.) That explains why the Masters is getting $100K in action at some books while the four tennis majors might not get that combined this year.
This isn't a case of tennis being a difficult sport to bet. In fact, in Europe, it's probably the second most popular sport for gambling after soccer. Granted, as the WSJ football betting last week and The Mag's Shaun Assael examined in even greater depth last year, that might be because gamblers across the pond see it as an easy game to fix. But it could also be because, over there it holds the kind of sway the big two do over here.
Street corners in Spain are peppered with public courts and kids doing their best Raffy impressions. In some war torn parts of Eastern Europe poverty-stricken kids view tennis as an escape route, like football or basketball here. A couple years ago The Mag's Lindsay Berra wrote a great piece about Belgrade's Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic. They learned the game as kids while bombs were raining down on their homeland. They practiced in drained swimming pools. Not exactly Nick Bolletierri conditions.
In the United States, casual fans think tennis is played four times a year. But on the tightly packed European continent, national interest in homegrown talent runs deep every weekend. Of the ATP's current top 20 players, only two, tennis betting and James Blake, are American. Fourteen are from Europe, representing six different countries.
No wonder fans from Lisbon to Bhudapest get jacked up for the net game, whether it's Wimbledon or a low-level tourney like the Estoril Open in Portugal (congrats to Spain's Albert Montanes for winning that one, btw). Chances are good that someone representing their flag will not only be playing, but have a shot at winning.
And that's all any bettor can ask for.
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