Hudson, Drew help Diamondbacks avoid sweep

Baseball Betting Lines

09/09/2010 - Phoenix, AZ (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Dan Hudson pitched seven solid innings and Stephen Drew fueled Arizona's offense, as the Diamondbacks took a 3-1 win over the San Francisco Giants to avoid being swept in the three-game series.

Hudson (5-1) gave up one run on five hits and two walks to get another win against the Giants. He took the victory back on August 28 after limiting San Francisco to two runs in seven innings.

Drew tripled and scored the decisive run in the third inning on Kelly Johnson's single. Drew added an RBI single in the seventh for Arizona, which snapped a four-game losing streak.

Barry Zito (8-12) limited Arizona to two runs in six innings, and struck out seven. But he still took the loss for a fifth straight start as the Giants had their four-game win streak broken.

San Francisco fell to two games behind Atlanta in the NL wild card chase, as the Braves beat Pittsburgh on Wednesday. The Giants also entered Wednesday's contest one game behind San Diego, which is playing Los Angeles, in the NL West standings.

With one out in the first inning, Freddy Sanchez homered to left to put the Giants in front. However, some inaccuracy from Zito helped Arizona tie the game in the second.

Zito walked Chris Young and Adam LaRoche to begin the second, and after Mark Reynolds grounded into a double play, Miguel Montero doubled to center to plate a run.

Johnson's third-inning hit put the Diamondbacks up, 2-1, and Hudson made the lead hold up. He got a double-play grounder to end the fourth, then set San Francisco down in order in the fifth and sixth.

The Giants then had runners at the corners with two away in the seventh. But Hudson retired Travis Ishikawa, pinch-hitting for Zito, to ground out to first.

After Drew's RBI single gave the Diamondbacks a two-run edge, Esmerling Vasquez worked a scoreless eighth. Juan Gutierrez worked around a leadoff double by Jose Guillen in the ninth to seal the victory.

Game Notes

Gutierrez got his eighth save...Zito has dropped his last eight decisions. He hasn't gotten a win since July 16, though has five quality starts since then.

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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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