Abreu helps Angels get by A's
Baseball Betting Lines
09/05/2010 - Oakland, CA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Bobby Abreu drove in three runs and scored three times, as the Angels took down the Athletics, 7-4, to avoid a three-game sweep at the Oakland Coliseum.
Abreu and Mike Napoli each homered for Los Angeles, which ended a six-game road trip with a 3-3 mark. Hideki Matsui and Torii Hunter had an RBI apiece.
"We played pretty great today," Hunter said. "I think we played the game the right way today."
Ervin Santana (15-9) gave up three runs -- two earned -- on six hits over six innings to improve to 5-1 over his last six starts. The right-hander also walked four batters and fanned three.
Jeff Larish hit a two-run double for the Athletics, who have dropped five of seven. Vin Mazzaro (6-8) got rocked in 4 1/3 innings, giving up five runs on six hits. The right-hander lost his sixth straight decision.
"He (Mazzaro) has a little blister on his finger that he's been battling. I think he went out there today and did the best he could," A's catcher Landon Powell said.
After stranding the bases loaded in the second, the Angels scored four times in the third inning. Howie Kendrick reached base when he grounded into a fielder's choice and crossed the plate on Abreu's homer to right-center. Matsui hit a two-out single and scored on Napoli's blast to left-center.
Oakland got a run back in the home third. Rajai Davis walked, stole second, and scored on Powell's single.
The A's scored two more runs in the fourth to cut the gap to 4-3. Jack Cust singled and Mark Ellis reached first on Erick Aybar's fielding error. Larish cleared the bases with a double to left-center field. Santana retired the next three batters to keep LA in front.
Los Angeles went ahead by two runs in the top of the fifth. Abreu walked and crossed the plate on Hunter's double for a 5-3 lead.
Oakland loaded the bases with two outs in the home fifth, but Larish struck out to end the threat.
The Angels plated two runs in the seventh to extend their margin to 7-3. Kendrick led off with a double and raced home on Abreu's single. Abreu stole second, advanced to third on a groundout, and scored on Matsui's base hit.
The A's scored a run off Fernando Rodney in the ninth. Coco Crisp led off with a single and moved to second two batters later on Gabe Gross' groundout. Cust followed with a bloop RBI single to left. Ellis' base hit put men on first and second, but Larish grounded out to end the game.
Game Notes
The Athletics and Angels have split 16 games this season...Oakland's last three-game sweep of the Angels took place at the Coliseum from June 29-July 1, 2004...Santana boasts a tremendous 12-3 record over 20 career matchups (18 starts) with Oakland and has been terrific as well at the Coliseum, where he's gone 6-1 in nine starts and a pair of relief efforts...Mazzaro fell to 1-2 lifetime against the Angels.
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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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