Brignac homers as Rays beat Tribe

Baseball Betting Lines

07/25/2010 - Cleveland, OH (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Reid Brignac hit a three-run homer, as the Tampa Bay Rays earned a 4-2 decision over the Cleveland Indians in the rubber match of a three-game series at Progressive Field.

Carl Crawford also knocked in a run, while Willy Aybar and John Jaso each chipped in with a pair of hits and a run scored for Tampa Bay, which snapped its 18-game slide at Progressive Field on Saturday and has won four of six overall.

Wade Davis (8-9) picked up the win after tossing 6 1/3 effective innings. The right-hander, who allowed seven hits and two runs with one walk and four strikeouts, has won three straight decisions. Rafael Soriano locked the game down with a scoreless ninth to register his 26th save of the season.

"The first two innings was an uphill battle," Davis said. "Couldn't really find anything to go to throughout the whole game, but we played some great defense today and won the game."

Carlos Santana and Andy Marte each knocked in a run apiece for the Indians, who have dropped three of their last four after a six-game winning streak.

Justin Masterson (3-9) was tagged with the loss for yielding four runs -- three earned -- on five hits with a pair of walks and struck out five over 6 2/3 innings.

Santana's sacrifice fly in the first gave the Indians the early lead, but Tampa Bay answered with three in the second. Aybar worked a two-out walk and went to third on Jaso's single. Brignac then hit a three-run homer that just cleared the wall in right to put the Rays up 3-1.

"I look at it as a slider that forgot to slide," Masterson said about the pitch to Brignac. "It turned out to be a terrible cutter like 85 m.p.h."

Cleveland got a run back in the home half on Marte's fielder's choice RBI groundout. The Rays then restored their two-run lead in the fifth. Jason Bartlett started things by reaching on an error, stole second, advanced to third on a ground ball and crossed the plate on Crawford's sac fly.

Marte led off the seventh with a base hit, and after Michael Brantley bounced into a force out, Davis was replaced by Joaquin Benoit, who surrendered a base hit to Asdrubal Cabrera before retiring the next two hitters and keep the score 4-2.

Grant Balfour worked out of trouble in the eighth, getting pinch-hitter Shelley Duncan to fly out to leave runners at second and third. Soriano issued a two-out double to Shin-Soo Choo in the bottom of the ninth before getting Santana to fly out to center that ended the game.

Game Notes

Despite the loss, the Indians are still 7-3 since the All-Star break...Masterson is now winless in his last four starts...Cleveland went 1- for-10 with runners in scoring position ands stranded 11, while Tampa Bay finished 1-for-6 with RISP and left three.

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NFL owners, already life's biggest winners, want to try their luck with the lottery.


That was the news out of their meetings last week, where team bosses voted unanimously to allow stamping state and local lottery tickets with franchise logos, if, ahem, any governments wanted to do a deal.

A shocker: Within days the Pats announced they'd be sponsoring the Massachusetts state lottery, the Skins said they'd slap their sticker on Virginia scratch-offs and the Ravens admitted they were talking to Maryland lottery bosses. In all likelihood, it won't be long before every team is a presenting sponsor of scratch-offs or just plain old pick fives. "The change in policy was approved 32-0," said NFL spokesman Greg Aiello. "So you can expect to see more deals soon."

It's a branding opportunity too big for the owners to ignore, and one a couple of dozen baseball franchises have enjoyed for years. The fact the NFL has been slower to act than those slack-brained Seligites is indicative of its complicated relationship with all forms of gambling. Consider this: Last Thursday, as the Pats and the Redskins finalized their new lottery deals, a lawyer representing the NFL argued before Delaware's Supreme Court that the state's newly signed sports betting law should be repealed.

The NFL betting is the face of opposition to sports gambling . And as much as it would like to share that responsibility with other leagues, that's not going to happen as long as more than 40% of all money legally wagered on games is bet on football. That's why the Brewers can do a multi-million dollar deal with a local casino, or the Celtics can make their own pact with the Mass lottery, and the response is, "Sweet, let's play." But when the NFL does it the stakes are higher, and everyone from NPR's Frank Deford to the Associated Press to the guys blogging at Deadspin will line up to play gotcha.

So I asked Aiello, who surely knew there'd be piling on, how the league can rail against being bait for sports bettors, then allow its franchises to be just that for lotteries, the most insidious and addictive form of gambling around. He emailed me this response: "We are not moral crusaders. NFL personnel are permitted to engage in legal forms of gambling, except for betting on NFL games. We are making a distinction here between the spread of gambling on the outcome of our games and supporting state lottery scratch-off games, that have nothing to do with the outcome of our games."

Here's where I should rip him. But, the thing is, he's right. Not to get Obama on you, but this is a complicated, nuanced issue. As much as lotteries are considered a tax on the poor, the NFL isn't a socially obligated government program -- it's just a business. Scratch-off's help the bottom line, sports betting doesn't. Now, it's okay to call the league hypocritical when it releases injury reports, which players have told me only helps bettors … But when it supports other forms of gaming? Big Deal.

Now, it's okay to call the league hypocritical when it releases injury reports, which players have told me only helps bettors. And it's okay to mutter something obscene when the league pretends gambling doesn't help drive TV ratings and fan interest and put money in owners' pockets. But when it supports other forms of gaming? Big Deal. The Bears should put an orange "C" on every deck of cards dealt at Harrah's in Joliet; the Eagles should slap their logo on roulette wheels at the Borgata in Atlantic City; the Dolphins should hold training camp at the El San Juan in Puerto Rico.

Seriously.

The NFL's problem, when it comes to the gambling world, isn't hypocrisy, it's worse: The bosses lack vision. That's why the league is picking unwinnable fights in Delaware and taking pot shots from critics after making smart sponsorship deals. Roger Goodell and his gang are acting and thinking locally rather than globally, which is rare for them, especially compared to their professional (and amateur) counterparts.

The NBA held its All Star game in Las Vegas and David Stern's kingdom didn't crumble (although the town did bring plenty of players to their knees.) I'd say it's 6 to 5 and pick 'em that Lebron will make a road swing through Sin City before his career is over.

Even the NCAA College Football Betting is more progressive on this issue than the NFL. Several years ago Rachel Newman Baker, college sports' gambling czar, opened a dialogue with Vegas bookmakers to learn about how they do business. She's visited Nevada sports books, studied their operations and listened to how they regulate action. Now she knows she can expect a call from bookmakers, who lose money when sports are fixed, if they think something sketchy is going on in NCAA games. She's not in favor of sports betting, but, as she once told me, "I know it's not going away, either."

The NFL can't seem to accept that. And until it can find peace with the idea, it'll get flack, even when it's right.

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