Cubs' Lilly to make possible showcase start against Astros

Baseball Betting Lines

07/27/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Slumping lefty Ted Lilly faces a team against which he's had career-long success tonight, when the Chicago Cubs meet the Houston Astros in the second test of a three-game series at Minute Maid Park.

In Monday's opener, Ryan Theriot hit his first home run of the season and Carlos Silva worked five innings to push Chicago past Houston, 5-2.

Theriot finished with a pair of hits and Alfonso Soriano doubled twice, scored a run and drove in a run to lift the Cubs to their third win in four games.

Silva (10-4) yielded a lone run on five hits while walking one and fanning four for Chicago. Carlos Marmol worked a scoreless ninth inning to preserve the win and earn his 19th save of the season.

Wesley Wright (0-1) absorbed the loss in his second big-league start after giving up four runs on eight hits over five innings. He walked one and struck out four for the Astros, who have dropped three out of four.

Lilly, rumored to be a hot commodity on the trade market as the non-waiver transaction deadline approaches at the end of the month, has won seven of eight decisions in 11 career starts against Houston while maintaining a stingy 2.36 earned run average in 72 1/3 innings.

He pitched well enough for an eighth win when facing the Astros in his most recent start on July 21, scattering seven hits and allowing a single run in 7 1/3 innings of a game the Cubs eventually lost, 4-3, at Wrigley Field.

The tough-luck no-decision is part of a recent rough stretch for the 34-year- old Californian, who is winless in four starts since defeating Pittsburgh on June 29. He's 0-2 with two no-decisions in the subsequent efforts, while allowing 28 hits and 20 runs in 24 2/3 innings.

A 1996 draft pick of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Lilly is 1-4 in seven road starts this season.

Houston counters with red-hot right-hander Brett Myers, who by contrast, has not lost since June 29.

The 29-year-old Jacksonville product, who'll turn 30 next month, has beaten St. Louis and Pittsburgh and racked up a pair of no-decisions in his last four starts, while giving up just 19 hits and six runs in 28 2/3 innings.

Myers also got a tough-luck no-decision after facing Lilly in the aforementioned July 21 game at Wrigley, allowing five hits and a run with eight strikeouts in seven innings in Houston's one-run win. He's pitched at least seven innings in three straight starts and has struck out 17 batters while walking just three.

Lifetime against the Cubs, Myers is 8-3 with a pair of complete games and a 2.52 ERA in 85 2/3 innings. He's unbeaten so far in 2010 at home, having gone 5-0 in nine starts.

Houston has won six of 10 matchups with the Cubs this season.

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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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