Cards try to make it two straight wins in Washington

Baseball Betting Lines

08/28/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The St. Louis Cardinals will try move closer towards a playoff berth tonight in the third test of a four-game series against the homestanding Washington Nationals.

The Cardinals are one game off the wild card lead in the National League and sit four games behind Cincinnati for NL Central supremacy. After losing the opener of this series in 13 innings on Thursday, St. Louis responded with a 4-2 triumph Friday thanks to solo homers from Albert Pujols and Matt Holliday. Pujols owns 401 home runs in his career after belting No. 400 a day before.

Jon Jay also plated a run and starter Jaime Garcia threw 5 1/3 shutout innings with seven strikeouts to improve to 12-6. Ryan Franklin gave up a run in the ninth and still managed to post his 22nd save of the season.

"Every game is big, especially in the situation we're in now," Garcia said.

Hoping to duplicate Garcia's success on the mound tonight will be Kyle Lohse, who is just 2-5 with a 6.47 ERA in 11 starts this season. He ended a two-game slide his last time out in a win at Pittsburgh on Monday, as he limited the Pirates to two runs and six hits in 5 1/3 frames.

Lohse, a right-hander, beat Washington on May 17 this season and is 3-1 in nine career matchups, seven of which have been starts, with the Nationals.

Washington is still trying to get over the awful news that pitching phenom Stephen Strasburg will likely undergo Tommy John surgery on his right arm, and may not be available until the 2012 campaign.

The Nationals sustained their fifth loss in six tries last night, as Willie Harris homered and Ian Desmond ended with three hits and a run scored.

"We had 12 hits. The opportunities are out there," Nationals manager Jim Riggleman said. "That means we're competitive against tough pitchers and tough ball clubs."

Scott Olsen took the loss for Riggleman's club after yielding three runs -- one earned -- in six innings.

Toeing the rubber for the Nats tonight will be veteran Livan Hernandez. The big right-hander, however, is 0-2 in his last four starts and was beaten by the Cubs on Monday at Nationals Park. In the 9-1 decision, Hernandez gave up seven runs and 10 hits in 4 1/3 innings.

Hernandez was coming off seven innings of two-run ball at Atlanta, but couldn't carry the success into his most recent outing. He is 8-9 in 26 starts this season and 5-7 in 18 career meetings -- all starts -- against St. Louis.

Washington halted a six-game losing streak in this series with Thursday's triumph. St. Louis has still prevailed in 14 of the last 17 meetings between the teams and swept a two-game set from the Nationals at Busch Stadium in May.

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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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