Phillies try to even series with Cubs

Baseball Betting Lines

07/18/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Philadelphia Phillies needed some late heroics to stop the Chicago Cubs yesterday afternoon and hope that the momentum will carry over into this evening's finale of a four-game series from Wrigley Field.

The Phillies trailed 1-0 with two outs in the top of the ninth inning before scoring four runs to take the lead for good. Placido Polanco, who was activated from the 15-day disabled list prior to the game, had an RBI single and Ross Gload scored on a wild pitch. Jayson Werth later walked with the bases loaded to plate a run and Raul Ibanez put a lid on the scoring with an RBI single for a 4-1 edge.

Closer Brad Lidge allowed a walk in the bottom of the ninth before recoding his seventh save of the season. Cole Hamels was sharp through seven scoreless innings, as he allowed seven hits with five K's and two walks. Chad Durbin worked a scoreless eighth inning to grab the win.

"It's tremendous," Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said of the win. "We gotta win some games. Every game we win from here on out is huge. We're chasing two teams and we need to put together some wins if we're going to stay in this thing."

Werth and Ibanez both ended with two hits and an RBI for the Phillies, who ended a two-game slide and won for the fifth time in seven tries. They are now 4 1/2 games behind Atlanta for the NL East lead, with the New York Mets lurking at five games off the pace.

Taking the hill for Manuel's club tonight will be ace Roy Halladay. Halladay is only 2-4 in his last six decisions and did not figure into the decision the last time out in a 1-0 win over Cincinnati despite tossing nine innings and giving up five hits. The righty also fanned nine batters.

Halladay is 10-7 with a 2.19 ERA in 19 starts this season and will try for his first career victory over the Cubs. In two career starts against Chicago he is 0-2 with a 3.00 earned run average.

Chicago suffered its first loss on the 10-game homestand (2-1) and wasted a superb effort from starter Randy Wells on Saturday. Wells delivered seven shutout innings and struck out five in the no-decision, while Carlos Marmol was the culprit in the ninth, allowing four runs on one hit and five walks to suffer the loss.

"Sometimes he's effectively wild," staff mate Sean Marshall said of Marmol on the team's site. "Today, he was picking at the corners a little bit. With a lineup like the Phillies have, you have to stay ahead of them. He knows what he has to do. He's done it so well this year and last year and his entire career."

Ryan Theriot had the lone RBI for the Cubs in the seventh inning, while Derrek Lee, Marlon Byrd and Starlin Castro had two hits apiece in defeat.

Tom Gorzelanny will try to pitch the Cubs to a series triumph when he takes the hill Sunday. Gorzelanny has won two straight appearances and previously toed the rubber on July 10 against the Los Angeles Dodgers. In the 7-3 win at Dodger Stadium, he gave up two runs -- one earned -- in six innings to improve to 4-5 in 18 games (12 starts) to go along with a 3.16 ERA.

The left-hander beat the Phillies on May 19 this season on the road, as he tossed 6 2/3 shutout innings in his team's 4-1 win. Gorzelanny is 1-1 with a 3.86 ERA in two career starts against Philadelphia. He is just 1-3 in the Windy City this season.

Chicago, which will also host Houston and St. Louis, is 10 games off the lead in the NL Central Division.

The Phillies had a five-game winning streak at Wrigley Field halted with Thursday's loss, but have still won nine of the past 13 meetings between the ballclubs.

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Academy Award Betting Odds for Best Picture Offer Great Value

If there is any category that is not an obvious win for any one nominee in this year's Academy Awards, it would be for Best Picture.  Sure the Departed is a 5/7 favorite, but that's hardly anything when we look at Helen Mirren and her "out-of-reach" 1 to 40 odds (which means you would win a whopping $1 for every $40 bet).

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"It hasn't done well in the guilds, which means there isn't much industry support," said Tom O'Neil of awards site TheEnvelope.com, "But several critics are expecting it to win, and that gets my attention." Babel had 7 to 2 odds at press time.

Who is to say independently produced Little Miss Sunshine won't be this year's Crash.  Last year, Crash won for Best Motion Picture, shocking those who bet on gay cowboy flick, Brokeback Mountain, as the favorite to win. 

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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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