A-Rod tries to inch closer to 500 homers as Yanks host Rays

Baseball Betting Lines

07/22/2007 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Shooting for their third straight victory, the New York Yankees close out a four-game set against division rival Tampa Bay this afternoon at Yankee Stadium.

After being crushed in the series opener on Friday night by a score of 14-4, the Bronx Bombers rebounded to take both ends of a doubleheader on Saturday with a 7-3 victory in the opener and then a 17-5 thrashing in the nightcap.

The early game made a winner out of Luis Vizcaino, even though he pitched just one inning of relief behind a strong effort by starter Kei Igawa. Igawa allowed just two runs on seven hits, two of those home runs, over five innings of action. Shelley Duncan, Andy Phillips and Hideki Matsui all knocked in two runs, while Alex Rodriguez crossed the plate twice in the win.

BJ Upton had yet another home run for the Devil Rays and had a total of three hits in the first game, but it wasn't nearly enough as reliever Jae Kuk Ryu suffered the loss.

Yankee bats made a huge statement in the second game as they generated 20 hits, eight of those being doubles, in the lopsided decision. Rodriguez cranked his 33rd home run of the season, leaving him three shy of 500 for his career, and also knocked in four runs to leave him four shy of 100 RBI for the season.

Johnny Damon had a four-RBI game and Bobby Abreu finished 2-for-4 with three RBI and three runs scored for New York.

Yankees starter Matt DeSalvo gave up seven hits and four runs in 4 2/3 innings. Vizcaino threw 1 1/3 innings of scoreless relief to pick up his second win of the day.

JP Howell surrendered a career-high 10 hits and career-high seven runs in five innings for the Devil Rays, who had won three of four games heading into action on Saturday. Jonny Gomes went 3-for-4 with two runs scored for the visitors.

As someone who has never finished at or below .500 in a single season, Andy Pettitte is having a rough go of it in the Bronx this season, but with a 12-1 career mark against Tampa Bay this might be the perfect matchup for the left-hander this afternoon.

Pettitte, already 1-0 this season versus the Rays, allowed just a single run on seven hits over seven innings on Tuesday against Toronto, yet still failed to factor into what became a 3-2 win for the Bombers. The Louisiana native seemed to be hitting all of his spots in that outing, fanning a season-high seven batters along the way.

As for Tampa Bay, James Shields is just the opposite of Pettitte because he has yet to earn a victory against New York, now 0-3 after losing his first decision of the season to the Yankees.

Shields, who is just a single game over .500 for his career at the moment, picked up his eighth win of the campaign on Tuesday when he permitted just two runs on seven hits over seven innings of work. He walked one and struck out two, which means he's fanned a total of just four in his last two outings after coming up with a total of 27 in the previous three games.

With their two wins yesterday the Yankees moved to within 7 1/2 games of Boston for first place in the AL East and are now 31-20 at home in 2007 while Tampa Bay wallows in last in the division, a mere 16-31 on the road and 20 games out of contention.

As he has done for much of the season, Rodriguez leads the majors in both home runs (33) and RBI (96) and now has nine runs scored as well over the last eight games.

The Devil Rays, who have won just four times in the last 14 games in the Bronx, have gotten huge production out of Upton in the last seven days, watching him knock out three home runs, plate nine and score nine times himself.

The Yankees now lead the season series 6-5 after yesterday's double header sweep.

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Big Ten Conference odds

Teams that should be in: Michigan State, Indiana
Work left to do: Illinois, Purdue, Michigan, Iowa

Behind the big two, the pecking order might be in a bit of flux. Has Michigan State passed Indiana after handling the Hoosiers in East Lansing? Where is Illinois in that mix? What looked like a four-big league last week could be morphing into five -- and even six is not unthinkable at this point if everything breaks right.

Should be in:

Michigan State [21-8 (8-6), RPI: 20, SOS: 15] The Spartans made it four-for-four on the homestand, a gigantic accomplishment that leaves them in extremely good shape. MSU is only 1-6 on the road and is at Michigan and at Wisconsin to close things out, meaning the date with the Wolverines on Tuesday looms very, very large. Beating Texas early will hold up well, as will the rout of Bradley and the win over BYU, but will 8-8 be enough? It very well could be, as the computer numbers are good, but why chance it?

Indiana [18-9 (8-6), RPI: 24, SOS: 32] Hmm ... good thing the last two are at Northwestern and home to Penn State, because IU might want to get both to feel completely safe after dropping its third in the last four, fading after halftime at Michigan State. Who knew the best nonconference win would be over Southern Illinois, which is a gift that keeps on giving for the Hoosiers. The win over Wisconsin also looks good on the mantel.

Work left to do:

Illinois [21-9 (9-6), RPI: 31, SOS: 25] A good performance at Penn State leaves the Illini in pretty good shape. Can they go to Iowa and take care of business to really look on their way? That's a huge game, as there is a possible cluster of teams that will end at 9-7. Illinois beat Bradley, but has lost to Xavier. A 9-7 mark and a semifinals trip in Chicago could be enough with the computer profile hanging in there, but it would be better not to mess around, clinching at least a tie for third.

Purdue [18-10 (7-7), RPI: 47, SOS: 28] Couldn't get it done at Iowa, but did win at Northwestern to put 9-7 squarely in sight. Where does that leave the Boilermakers, though? Even if they beat Minnesota and Northwestern at home, that won't help the computer numbers. Nonconference wins over Virginia, DePaul and Oklahoma are solid, but not spectacular. The Boilers very well might need an upset in the B10 quarters to have a legit claim.

Michigan [19-10 (7-7), RPI: 55, SOS: 53] Well, Michigan did what it needed to do, winning at Minnesota to take control of its fate. The Wolverines have Michigan State and an already-wrapped-up-the-league Ohio State at home to close, so the chances are there. Win both and we can talk. There is no marquee win yet in the profile, and the Wolverines were splattered in several games against name opponents. A mediocre computer profile fueled by a lack of road wins isn't helping, either.

Iowa [16-12 (8-6), RPI: 80, SOS: 64] For the sake of being complete, we'll add Iowa, this season's Stanford. It's plausible that the Hawkeyes could get to 10-6 (at Penn State, vs. Illinois left), but where does that leave them after a gruesome nonconference performance where the best win was over ... Toledo? Iowa State? Cornell?? If they get to 10-6, we can start to look at what they need to do in the B10 tourney, although my gut sense is that they would need to make the final and have knocked off Ohio State or Wisconsin on the way to have any real claim.

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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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