Unpack your bags: Rockies conclude road swing against Nats

Baseball Betting Lines

07/22/2007 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Colorado Rockies will try to end their road trip on a positive note when they play the final contest of a four-game series this afternoon with the Washington Nationals at RFK Stadium.

The Rockies have lost two of three so far against the Nationals, including a 3-0 blanking in game three on Saturday, and are 5-4 on a 10-game swing.

Mike Bacsik combined with three Washington relievers on a three-hitter in the shutout. Bacsik (3-6) went 6 2/3 innings, allowing three hits and walking three.

Luis Ayala, Saul Rivera and Chad Cordero combined for 2 1/3 hitless frames of relief, with Cordero posting his 18th save of the season.

Felipe Lopez homered and Tony Batista drove in two runs for the Nationals, who have won three of four.

Colorado starter Rodrigo Lopez (5-3) allowed three runs on five hits with one walk and three strikeouts in six-plus frames. Willy Taveras, Jamey Carroll and Yorvit Torrealba accounted for the three hits for the Rockies.

Josh Fogg will take the hill for Colorado in search of his third straight victory. Fogg, who hasn't lost since June 24 at Toronto, defeated the Mets on July 4 before posting a winning decision on Tuesday at Pittsburgh behind seven innings of two-run, five-hit ball.

Fogg, who also struck out five batters, improved to 5-6 on the season with a 5.15 earned run average. The right-hander has made seven career starts against the Washington franchise and is 1-3 versus them with a 3.61 ERA.

Tim Redding is set to make his fourth start of the season for the Nationals and is 1-2 on the year with a 4.00 ERA. He took the loss last time out when he gave up three runs and seven hits over seven innings of a 4-2 loss to Houston on Tuesday.

The right-hander is without a decision in two games (one start) in his career against the Rockies though he has yielded just one run in a span of 7 1/3 innings.

Colorado won all eight meetings between the teams during the 2006 campaign. The Rockies also won four encounters at RFK Stadium over that span.

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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.