Boston's Beckett eyes win No. 13 vs. White Sox

Baseball Betting Lines

07/20/2007 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Josh Beckett tries to become the second 13-game winner in the majors this evening when the Boston Red Sox continue their four-game series with the Chicago White Sox at Fenway Park.

Beckett has dropped two of his last three starts, but with a victory tonight he will tie Cleveland left-hander C.C. Sabathia for the league lead in wins. Beckett was the hard-luck loser on Sunday against Toronto, as he surrendered a pair of runs on seven hits in eight innings to fall to 12-3 this season to go along with a 3.35 earned run average.

The 27-year-old right-hander, who has won just once at home since May 29, has faced the White Sox only twice in his young career and is 1-0 against them with a 4.66 ERA.

Chicago will counter with Cuban right-hander Jose Contreras, who is a dismal 5-11 with a 5.32 ERA. Contreras dropped his fourth straight start and fell for the seventh time in his last eight decisions on Sunday in Baltimore, as the Orioles battered him for five runs and 10 hits in six innings.

Contreras is 3-4 lifetime against the Red Sox with an 8.56 ERA in nine games, eight of which have been starts.

In a soggy opener to this set on Thursday, A.J. Pierzynski had three hits and knocked in three runs, and Paul Konerko homered, as the White Sox rolled to a 4-2 win in a game that started nearly two hours late due to rain.

Javier Vazquez (7-5) scattered nine hits and surrendered two runs over 6 1/3 innings to win his fourth straight decision. Bobby Jenks threw the ninth inning for his 26th save, as Chicago won for the third time four games following a three-game skid.

Dustin Pedroia had three hits and knocked in a run for the Red Sox, who have lost three in a row and eight of 11.

Daisuke Matsuzaka (11-7) was lifted after giving up two hits and three runs with a career-high six walks and six strikeouts in five-plus innings.

This is the first series of the season between these teams, but Boston is 12-8 in the matchup since the start of the 2004 campaign. The White Sox have also struggled in Beantown, where they have won just three times in their last seven visits.

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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.