Tulowitzki homers twice as Rockies stay hot with win over Reds

Baseball Betting Lines

09/08/2010 - Denver, CO (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Troy Tulowitzki hit two homers and drove in four runs, leading the surging Colorado Rockies in a 9-2 rout of the struggling Cincinnati Reds in the third of four games at Coors Field.

Tulowitzki notched his second career multi-homer game and first since June 23, 2009 for the Rockies, who have won six straight to climb to within four games of the first-place Padres, who are playing Los Angeles. Seth Smith also homered, while Jonathan Herrera and Eric Young, Jr. each had a two-run single in the win, Colorado's ninth straight at home over Cincinnati.

Carlos Gonzalez extended his hitting streak to 16 games with a 1-for-3 effort at the plate. Aaron Cook (6-8) earned the win, allowing one run, six hits and a walk in five-plus innings before leaving after a line drive hit him in the leg.

Joey Votto had three hits and drove in a run for the Reds, who have lost four straight and five of six, but still lead St. Louis by six games in the NL Central after the Cardinals lost to Milwaukee. Bronson Arroyo (14-10) lost his third straight start after giving up seven runs on eight hits in 4 1/3 frames.

Votto's RBI single in the first put the Reds ahead early, but the Rockies' lineup woke up and took a substantial lead.

Smith singled with one down in the second and moved to third on Miguel Olivo's double. Herrera followed with a two-run single to right for a 2-1 lead.

Dexter Fowler began the third with a base hit, and Gonzalez worked a walk to get to Tulowitzki, whose blast to left put Colorado ahead, 5-1. Tulowitzki added a leadoff shot in the fifth to extend the lead, and the Rockies added three more runs in the inning on Smith's solo homer and Young's two-run single for a eight-run advantage.

Cincinnati drew one closer on Paul Janish's RBI single in the seventh, and the Reds later loaded the bases with one out in the inning. Chris Valaika, however, grounded into an inning-ending double play.

Colorado cruised the rest of the way.

Game Notes

The Reds surrendered the NL's best record to Philadelphia, which beat Florida...Cincinnati last won at Coors Field on August 22, 2008...The Rockies tied their best win streak of 2010. They also won six straight from July 4-10...Cook is 4-0 lifetime against the Reds and has given up one run in 12 innings against Cincinnati in two starts this season...The Reds have lost 18 of their last 21 games against Colorado.

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FOOTBALL TRASH TALK

NFL Football Trash Talk

Trash talk has a place in every competitive endeavor (except baseball; those stirrup-wearers are too busy chewing on their sunflower seeds and their supplements to worry about what their opponents are doing).

Fantasy sports is no exception. Any intelligent discussion of the subject would probably start with a thesis statement or a definition of terms. Thankfully, this wont be an intelligent discussion.

Let me just say that I am happy to take a place in this space alongside my talented colleagues, even our commissioner. (You should see how she bleats like a demented paper boy about league fees on our fantasy site).

Trash talking, I would argue, is primarily about amusing your friends, their sheeplike demeanors and sloping foreheads notwithstanding. The best place I have found for football trash talking is at www.SportsAlarm.com.

Beyond the entertainment factor, though, I would recognize that the sophomoric ritual has one advantage, when properly applied. It magnifies your fantasy triumphs and mitigates your fantasy failures by transforming the eventual point total into an afterthought. Winning makes it seem like your opponent really is a truss-owning, lapel-pin-wearing nitwit. And in defeat, trash talk can be the air bag to break the fall from your hyperbolic heights. The plug-necked yahoos on your team, you can say, will be sacking groceries by the end of the season.

The best trash talk, in my view, is layered and nuanced. And it doesnt focus only on your opponents team. It picks apart your opponent. The idea is to create a shock-and-awe-scale blizzard of nonsense, and the goal is to make your opponent drop his hands from his keyboard in exasperation.

What team does your opponent root for? Accuse a Giants fan of having a Joe Namath pillowcase. Wheres your opponent from? Give a look of concern no matter his reply, then say, I'll try to type slower for you next time. Is your opponent into politics? Label everyone a tax-and-spend corporate shill.

Cap all that with a liberal application of irrelevance. For instance, dont just conclude by saying your opponent is a twerp who drafts like my grandmother. Say that your opponent is a sweater-wearing, eyebrow-plucking twerp who drafts his team about as well as Zsa Zsa Gabor gave acceptance speeches at the Oscars. By the time your foe makes sense of that, his starting running back will have had puppies.

But what about you? Hmm? Recall a memorable slam? Have a tried-and-true technique? Know someone who seems impervious to insult? Take a moment and tells us about it. Put together some (fit-for-publication) thoughts. You wont be too busy returning phone messages from your friends, Im sure, to reply.

In addition to the trash talking, the Sports Alarm has a huge gallery of high resolution pictures of beautiful women and models in bikinis. The most popular models are: Lindsay Lohan, Carrie Underwood, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Paris Hilton.

What Is the Point Spread?

What are Sports Betting Point Spreads?

In any football or basketball game (the main sports that use point spreads) there are two teams playing against each other.

Those teams, though, are rarely exactly evenly matched – meaning that typically one team has a better chance than the other to win the game. If bettors were allowed to bet on who was simply going to win the game, smart ones would obviously bet on the better team (likely winning more than 50% of the time in the process).

If winning were that easy the Las Vegas and online sportsbooks would stop taking any bets! This is where the point spread comes in: the basic function of the point spread is to balance the likelihood of each team “winning” by adjusting the final score by the point spread. After this adjustment is made you get the Against The Spread result (ATS result for short).

Let’s look at Super Bowl XXXIX, New England Patriots vs. Philadelphia Eagles. Most people believed the defending champ Patriots to be the better team – so if betting were simply based upon which team would win the game, an uneven majority of people would have wagered on New England. But, by using the point spread, the bookmakers adjusted the terms of the bet, evening the proposition so about half the people believed the Pats to be the smart bet, while the other half considered Philly to be the smart bet.

How to Read Point Spreads

New England Patriots -7 vs. Philadelphia Eagles

The better team, called the Favorite, is expected to win the game and must “give” or “lay” points to the weaker team. The favorite is listed with a minus sign and the number of points they are favored by (e.g., New England -7)

In the case of our example, New England must not only win the game, but they must win by more than 7 points for Pats bettors to have a winning ATS result. An Eagles bettor wins his bet either if:

To visit this internet sportsbook go to MySportsbook.com for all your football betting and World Series odds.