Bodine picks up sixth truck win at Texas

Autoracing Betting Lines

06/05/2010 - Fort Worth, TX (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Todd Bodine put on a dominating performance, but had to hold off Ron Hornaday Jr. and Johnny Sauter in a green-white- checkered finish to win Friday's WinStar World Casino 400k Camping World Truck Series race at Texas Motor Speedway.

Bodine led 97 of 167 laps for his record-extending sixth victory at Texas. He beat Ron Hornaday Jr. out of the pits and took the lead for good with 39 laps remaining.

A late-race caution for an accident involving Matt Crafton and David Starr set up the final two-lap overtime finish. Hornaday was running second when the race resumed, but he got shoved up the track just after the restart, which allowed Johnny Sauter to take the second spot.

Bodine finished one second ahead of Sauter to end his 24-race winless streak in the series. His last victory came one year ago at Texas.

"I'm usually not that good on restarts, so I knew, especially with Ron on the outside of me, I had to get a good one, and that last one, I did get a good one, and I didn't spin the tires, except right before third gear," Bodine said.

Bodine claimed his 11th victory on 1.5-mile (intermediate) tracks and his 18th overall in the series.

Bodine also extended his points lead to 65 over Aric Almirola, who finished two laps behind in 12th. Almirola pitted under green on lap 60, but had a tire get away from his stall. NASCAR slapped him with a pass-through penalty.

Sauter finished second, while rookie Austin Dillon, the pole sitter, had a career-best run of third. Mike Skinner and Ken Schrader rounded out the top- five.

"We weren't the greatest truck tonight," Sauter said. "In the long run, we were pretty fast."

James Buescher took the sixth spot, followed by Timothy Peters and former Formula One driver Nelson Piquet Jr. Hornaday wound up ninth, and Johnny Benson, driving Kyle Busch's No.18 truck, came in 10th. Busch did not compete at Texas due to his Sprint Cup Series commitments this weekend at Pocono.

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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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