Sadler earns first truck win at Pocono

Autoracing Betting Lines

07/31/2010 - Long Pond, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Elliott Sadler held off Kasey Kahne during a second green-white-checkered finish to win the inaugural Pocono Mountains 125 Camping World Truck Series race at Pocono Raceway.

Just after the restart for the first two-lap overtime finish, Sadler got a push from behind by Justin Lofton and moved ahead of Kahne to take the lead. Johnny Sauter got loose and bumped into Ron Hornaday Jr., as Hornaday spun around and then slammed into the infield wall in turn three. That set up the second green-white-checkered attempt.

Sadler easily pulled away from Kahne after the final restart and beat his Richard Petty Motorsports teammate in the Sprint Cup Series by 0.45 seconds for his first truck win in his eighth start.

"Kasey races me so clean, and he's the best teammate in the world to have," said Sadler, who started on the pole and led 31 of 55 laps. "He was good on the bottom, and I was good on the outside. When we had that last restart, it just worked out for us. I knew he was going to be the guy to beat."

Driving the No.2 Chevrolet, Sadler became the third different Kevin Harvick Inc. driver to win in the last three races. Harvick picked up the win two weeks ago at Gateway International Raceway, while Hornaday claimed his first victory of the season last weekend at O'Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis.

Sadler also became the 21st different driver to win a race in each of NASCAR's three national touring series. However, Sadler had not won a NASCAR event since September, 2004 when he took the Sprint Cup race at Fontana, CA.

"I told these guys [on the team] on the last lap that I pretty much had tears in my eyes," he said. "It's been such a tough couple of years."

Kahne, who drove the No.18 Toyota for Kyle Busch Motorsports, tried to capture his third win in as many career truck starts. Kahne won in each of his first two starts, which came at the tail end of the 2004 season.

"It was a ton of fun racing this truck for Kyle, and this is a really good team," Kahne said. "We should have been battling Elliott. I had the best truck, but I didn't win the race. I'm disappointed in myself for that."

Matt Crafton finished third, followed by Aric Almirola and rookie Justin Lofton.

Mike Skinner, Austin Dillon, also a rookie in the series this year, Timothy Peters, Denny Hamlin and Jason White completed the top-10.

Hamlin held the lead late in the race, but the Sprint Cup regular scraped the wall and fell behind.

Points leader Todd Bodine overcame a spin in the closing laps to finish 12th. Bodine now holds a 149-point advantage over Almirola.

Hornaday took a huge hit in points after his 29th-place finish. The four-time and defending series champion dropped to seventh in the standings, as he trails Bodine by 268 points.

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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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