Beltran, Mets hold off Dodgers

Baseball Betting Lines

07/21/2007 - Los Angeles, CA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Carlos Beltran homered for the second straight game and the New York Mets scored the go-ahead run in the eighth inning on a throwing error in a 4-1 triumph over the Los Angeles Dodgers.

David Wright also drove in a run and Oliver Perez threw 7 1/3 strong innings, as the Mets took the second contest of the four-game series after winning 13-9 on Thursday.

Perez (9-6) allowed six hits and a run, walked three and struck out eight, as the NL East-leading Mets won for the fifth time in seven games. Billy Wagner threw the final inning for his 21st save.

"I felt real good," Perez said. "I changed speeds and made my pitches. They have a good hitting lineup and I was just trying to keep my team in the game."

Mets second baseman Jose Valentin suffered a fractured right tibia when he fouled a ball off his leg in the fourth inning. This is the second time Valentin has hurt his right leg this season. He suffered a partial tear of the ACL in his right knee and was on the disabled list from April 29 until June 7.

"It's not a complete fracture, but it's enough to keep me out for six weeks," Valentin said. "I have to live with it and take it a day at a time."

Nomar Garciaparra homered for the Dodgers, who have dropped three of four.

Brett Tomko gave up five hits and an unearned run over six innings in the start for Los Angeles. Roberto Hernandez (0-1) allowed two hits and three runs -- two earned -- in the eighth inning.

With the game tied 1-1, Jose Reyes doubled to start the eighth and Marlon Anderson then put down a bunt. Hernandez raced to field the ball, which trickled toward third base, but his throw to first was low and the ball got by James Loney, as Reyes scored. Beltran clubbed the next pitch over the wall in right-center field.

Garciaparra flied out to center field, leaving runners at the corners to end the eighth before Wagner retired the side in order in the ninth.

Wright singled in Anderson in the first, but Garciaparra led off the second with a homer to center.

Game Notes

Garciaparra has only three homers this year...Juan Pierre extended his hitting streak to 13 games with a single in the first inning for the Dodgers. He then stole second and third base to bring him to 40 for the season...Jeff Kent had two of LA's seven hits.

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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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