Blue Jays homer five times, take series vs. Twins

Baseball Betting Lines

07/08/2010 - Toronto, ON (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Alex Gonzalez drove in three runs and Brett Cecil pitched seven strong innings, as the Toronto Blue Jays defeated the Minnesota Twins, 8-1, in the rubber match of a three-game series.

Cecil (8-5) allowed one run on four hits for the Blue Jays, who have won two straight following a three-game skid. Adam Lind, Fred Lewis, Lyle Overbay, Jose Bautista and Jose Molina each hit a solo home run in the victory.

Scott Baker started on the mound and suffered the loss for the Twins, who have dropped five of their last seven games overall. Baker (7-8) yielded five runs on seven hits over six innings of work. Michael Cuddyer homered for the lone Minnesota run.

The Twins will now travel to Detroit for a key AL Central divisional weekend series against the Tigers prior to the upcoming All-Star break, while the Blue Jays will close their unofficial first half of the season with a home set against Boston.

After Lewis led off the bottom of the first with his fifth home run of the season, the Blue Jays scored four runs in the home portion of the second inning for a five-run advantage.

Lind began the second with a leadoff homer and Aaron Hill followed with a single. Edwin Encarnacion's one-out base hit preceded another single by Molina which loaded the bases. With two outs, Gonzalez drilled a double to center field and cleared the bases for a 5-0 margin.

The only run for the visitors was scored in the top of the fourth when Cuddyer reached down and belted a low fastball over the wall in left-center field.

In the seventh, solo home runs by Overbay and Molina gave the Twins a 7-1 advantage and the scoring was capped by Bautista's solo blast in the eighth.

Casey Janssen pitched a scoreless eighth before David Purcey took the mound to close it out in the top of the ninth.

Game Notes

Twins All-Star first baseman Justin Morneau, along with outfielder Delmon Young, are listed as day-to-day due to injuries suffered on Wednesday. Both missed this contest. Morneau has a mild concussion and Young has a left wrist sprain...Toronto has now captured 17 of the last 22 meetings between these clubs...Baker fell to 1-6 in nine road starts this season and is also 0-4 lifetime against the Jays after this setback...The game was completed in a swift 2 hours, 15 minutes...J.J. Hardy posted two hits in the loss.

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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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