Dodgers go for split with Mets in LA

Baseball Betting Lines

07/22/2007 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Los Angeles Dodgers will try for a series split with the New York Mets, and maintain their new lead in the National League West, when the two clubs wrap their four-game series this afternoon at Dodger Stadium.

Thanks in part to recent struggles by San Diego that includes a current two- game losing streak, the Dodgers jumped over the Padres and into first place in the NL West by a game courtesy of an 8-6 victory over the Mets on Saturday.

Matt Kemp hit a three-run homer as part of a five-run fourth inning and Juan Pierre added two hits and a pair of RBI to extend his hitting streak to 14 games for the Dodgers, who had dropped the first two games of this series.

Brad Penny (12-1) went 6 1/3 innings, allowing four runs -- three earned -- on six hits with a pair of walks and five strikeouts. With the win, he became the first starting pitcher to open a season 12-1 for the Dodgers since the franchise moved to Los Angeles in 1958.

Jorge Sosa (7-5) gave up six runs and eight hits over four innings for New York, which had won three of four coming in. However, the loss, coupled with Atlanta's win over St. Louis, cut the Mets' lead to just 2 1/2 games for the top spot in the NL East over the Braves.

Carlos Beltran and David Wright both contributed two-run home runs. It was Beltran's third straight game with a homer.

Los Angeles' Eric Stults will get the starting nod today for the first time this season and for just the third time in his career. The left-hander has made four relief appearances with the Dodgers this year, going 0-1 with a 5.06 earned run average in that span. He was last in action on Tuesday when he tossed three innings against the Phillies, allowing four runs on eight hits.

Stults' first career start came against the Mets last year and he picked up his lone career win when he threw six frames of one-run ball on September 10, 2006.

Mark Hendrickson was originally slated to start this contest for LA, but threw two innings of relief in this series on Thursday and had his next start pushed back to Tuesday.

The Mets will send Orlando Hernandez to the hill this afternoon, and the hurler is coming off two straight wins that upped his record to 6-4 on the season with a shining 2.96 ERA.

Hernandez posted a win over Cincinnati on July 12 behind six innings of two- run ball before topping the Padres on the road Tuesday. The right-hander tossed seven shutout innings against San Diego, scattering two hits and a pair of walks in the victory.

"El Duque" faced the Dodgers on June 11 and took the loss after allowing five runs (four earned). He is 1-2 lifetime against them with a 5.64 ERA.

The Dodgers swept a three-game series against New York this season from June 11-13 at Chavez Ravine. The Mets went 4-3 against LA in the 2006 series and swept Los Angeles in three games during last October's NL playoffs.

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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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