Dodgers hoping to further cripple Giants' playoff hopes

Baseball Betting Lines

09/04/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Matt Cain tries to make it two straight wins against the club that has given him more trouble than any other team in his young career when the San Francisco Giants continue their three-game set against the Los Angeles Dodgers this evening at Dodger Stadium.

Cain is a miserable 1-8 lifetime against the Dodgers with a 3.94 ERA in 15 starts. However, his lone win against them came the last time he faced them back on August 1, when he scattered four hits over 7 2/3 scoreless innings.

"It's obviously been a problem beating [the Dodgers]," Cain said after that elusive first victory. "It's one of those things where definitely I wanted to go out and win."

Cain, who is 10-10 with a 3.11 ERA on the year, did not get a decision on Sunday against Arizona, as he allowed three runs and six hits in 6 1/3 innings of his team's 9-7 win. He also struck out seven and walked a batter.

Opposing him will be Ted Lilly, who will be trying to rebound from his first loss as a Dodger.

Lilly saw his five-start winning streak come to an end Sunday in Colorado, as the Rockies reached him for seven runs and nine hits in just four innings. It was his first loss cine July 9 and dropped him to 8-9 on the season, while raising his earned run average to 3.59.

The 34-year-old left-hander is 3-1 with a 5.12 ERA in five starts against the Giants.

On Friday, Chad Billingsley was strong through eight innings of work and drove in the game-winning runs at the plate to carry Los Angeles to a 4-2 win in the opener of this set.

Billingsley (11-8) yielded two unearned runs on only two hits while walking a pair and fanning seven, with the right-hander combining with Hung-Chi Kuo to set down the last 10 Giants' hitters as the Dodgers ended a brief two-game slide. Kuo recorded his eighth save of the season.

"I seem to catch the Giants on my good day," Billingsley said. "The first few innings I was ahead on my fastball. As the game progressed, I threw more changeups. I could have gone out for the ninth if they wanted me to."

Rod Barajas continued his hot hitting since joining the Dodgers -- a team he grew up rooting for -- by hitting a home run in last night's triumph. Casey Blake went 2-for-3 with a pair of runs scored for Los Angeles, which has now won seven of 13 matchups with the Giants thus far in 2010.

Barry Zito's (8-11) misery continued, as the Giants lefty was charged with four runs on four hits and four walks while fanning five in just four innings to suffer the loss. He remained winless in his last 10 games, the longest streak of his career.

San Francisco stayed three games behind NL West-leading San Diego, which lost at home to Colorado Friday night, but fell to three games behind Philadelphia in the race for the NL Wild Card.

The Giants had won in five of their past six meetings with the Dodgers prior to Friday's setback.

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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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