Cards send Wainwright to hill vs. Dodgers

Baseball Betting Lines

07/17/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Adam Wainwright will try to become just the second 14-game winner in the major leagues and remain perfect at home when he leads the St. Louis Cardinals into the third test of a four-game series tonight versus the Los Angeles Dodgers at Busch Stadium.

Colorado Rockies ace and All-Star starter Ubaldo Jimenez leads the big leagues with 15 wins, while Wainwright is second with a 13-5 record and 2.11 earned run average in 19 starts. Wainwright is an All-Star himself and has won three straight and seven of his last nine starts, including an 8-0 win at Houston on July 9. He fired eight scoreless innings and struck out four batters.

The right-hander is 9-0 with a 1.43 ERA in nine home starts and may run into some trouble today versus a Dodgers club that beat him back on June 9 at Chavez Ravine. Wainwright allowed four runs and eight hits in six innings of a 4-3 setback, falling to 2-3 in nine career games (6 starts) against LA.

St. Louis has won three in a row and the first two portions of this series, including Friday's 8-4 triumph behind a two-run homer and four RBI from Yadier Molina. Randy Winn drove in a pair of runs and Felipe Lopez ended 2-for-5 with an RBI for the Cardinals, who are still a half-game behind Cincinnati for the top spot in the NL Central.

"We've done a good job of getting the count in our favor and when the ball's in the strike zone we've been aggressive with it," Cardinals manager Tony La Russa said. "We've done a good job of forcing near the middle of the plate and getting good hacks."

Jaime Garcia started for La Russa's club and did not record a decision after giving up two runs and eight hits in 3 1/3 innings. Kyle McClellan earned the win with 1 2/3 scoreless innings of relief.

The Cardinals will also host Philadelphia for four games after this set.

Los Angeles has lost two straight and three of four games, and sits tied with San Francisco at 3 1/2 games off the NL West lead. In last night's loss to the Cards, Chad Billingsley was roughed up for seven runs and 10 hits in four innings to absorb the loss.

"They put the ball in play, found holes and made things happen," Billingsley said. "It was one of those days."

James Loney had three hits and an RBI, while Rafael Furcal and Matt Kemp both finished with two hits and knocked in a run for LA. Dodgers slugger Manny Ramirez left the game in the first inning because of a calf injury and is listed as day-to-day. Ramirez was just activated from the 15-day disabled list this week due to a hamstring ailment.

Meanwhile, Dodgers starter Hiroki Kuroda has been struggling for a while and will take the mound Saturday at Busch Stadium. Kuroda is 2-6 with a 4.96 earned run average in his last nine starts and has lost back-to-back trips to the mound.

In a 4-0 loss to Florida on July 7, Kuroda was pounded for four runs and six hits in seven innings, while striking out four batters. The loss evened Kuroda's mark at 7-7 in 17 starts this season and raised his ERA to 3.87.

The Japanese right-hander, who is 4-4 in eight road starts this season, did not factor into the outcome of a 1-0 win over St. Louis on June 8. Kuroda delivered seven shutout frames and six K's for the no-decision that day and is 0-0 with a 1.38 ERA in two career starts in this series.

The Dodgers swept a three-game set at home versus the Cardinals from June 7-9 after losing five of seven to the club last season.

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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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