Astros head to Toronto for first time

Baseball Betting Lines

05/20/2011 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Houston Astros pay their first-ever visit to Toronto this evening when they play the first of three interleague games against the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre.

These teams have only met on one other occasion and that was back in 2005 when the Astros swept all three games from the Jays at Minute Maid Park.

Houston, though, comes into tonight's matchup riding a five-game losing streak after dropping a 4-2 decision to the St. Louis Cardinals on Thursday. Hunter Pence and Humberto Quintero both had two hits for the Astros, who have dropped 10 of their last 12 games overall.

J.A. Happ (3-5) went six innings, allowing three runs on four hits, walked three and struck out eight.

"I felt good," Happ said. "The difference today was bad pitching with guys on base."

Heading to the hill tonight for Houston will be rookie Aneury Rodriguez, who has lost his last two starts. After giving up just one hit in five scoreless innings in his first big league start, Rodriguez has been pounded to the tune of 12 runs and 13 hits over his last two outings, spanning 10 innings.

It won't get any easier for the 23-year-old right-hander tonight, as he faces a Blue Jays team that has won seven of their last eight games. Toronto continued to impress on Thursday, as J.P. Arencibia hit a go-ahead two-run homer in the seventh inning, powering the Blue Jays past the Tampa Bay Rays, 3-2.

Arencibia's blast made a winner of Ricky Romero (4-4), who evened his record by holding the Rays to one run on three hits and two walks over seven innings. He said the key to his success was simply getting the ball in the zone.

"I've been throwing a lot of strikes with my fastball and getting ahead, and I think that's been the biggest difference," Romero said.

Juan Rivera also homered for the Blue Jays, who had won six in a row prior to a 6-5 loss in the two-game series opener on Wednesday.

Hoping to keep the Jays momentum rolling tonight will be lefty Jo-Jo Reyes, who is 0-3 with a 4.75 ERA. Reyes did not get a decision on Saturday in Minnesota, but allowed three runs (two earned) and 10 hits in 5 2/3 innings. He also struck out six and walked a batter.

Reyes has faced the Astros four times and is 1-1 with a 6.52 ERA against them.

Toronto was 7-11 last season in interleague play, while the Astros finished a club-worst 3-12 versus the American League a year ago.

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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.