If you’re placing a small wager on the Kentucky Derby – and we mean small, as in one dollar – then you probably won’t get much satisfaction getting $2.50 back by betting on Big Brown. That’s like getting the smallest prize on a scratch-and-win lottery ticket.

Take Big Brown out of the equation (maybe he’ll draw a lousy post position, or wake up tomorrow and think he’s a duck), and the rest of the field levels out. Might as well put that sawbuck on one of the five viable “medium shots” on the board. Court Vision, Eight Belles, Monba and Tale of Ekati are 20-1, while Gayego is getting the most buzz of the horses priced at 25-1.

I like Gayego in this situation. He’s coming off a win at the Grade II Arkansas Derby, the same prep that Sunny’s Halo (1983) and Smarty Jones (2004) won before taking the Run for the Roses. Not bad for 25-1.

Kevin Garnett has been an NBA All-Defensive selection every year since 2000. But he’s never been named Defensive Player of the Year. Expect that to change in 2008.

With Garnett at the hub, the Boston Celtics have become not only the best defensive team in the league, but one of the best of all-time. Making the move from Minnesota got Garnett’s competitive juices flowing again, which can be seen in his effort on defense compared to last year. He’s also got a premium defender in Rajon Rondo working on the perimeter. Rondo allows Garnett to stay closer to the basket, where he does his best work.

Garnett is having an MVP-quality season on a team that is enjoying a historic turnaround. He won’t get that award in a season where the Kobe Bryant media bandwagon has filled up. Winning a championship and a Defensive POY will have to do for the Big Ticket.

Houston born American Idol 7 contestant David Cook is currently the 10/11 odds to win it all in the end. Besides having a oodles of originality, Cook can sing. The American voting public loves him and so do the judges. Oh, and it doesn’t hurt that he’s also got one of the best bleeding heart stories going: his older brother is dieing of brain cancer. So what does baby bro David do to win the hearts of Idol fans everywhere? He dedicates a song (Mariah Carey’s “You Will Always be My Baby”) to big bro Adam, who (now you may want to grab a tissue for this) was in the audience.

“That was the best performance all year,” Idol judge Randy Jackson said after he finished the song.

Getting Adam to the show was another heart-breaker: Close friends rallied to get a special plane donated, equipped with a medic and flight nurse; a radio station paid for the hotel; and the total tab for the trip reached $80,000.

“We made a dream a reality, and he wants everybody who is battling something like this to know, you gotta keep fighting,” said the Cooks’ longtime friend Darrick Scott.

“We’ve struggled just to see Adam get out of bed. To see them go on this trip like this and to be able to go out and support his brother, it’s overwhelming,” said Lori Hoffman, another old friend of Adam’s.

You may have read that David had a recent health scare when it was reported on TMZ.com that he was experiencing heart palpitations and elevated blood pressure during one of the shows and was admitted to a Los Angeles hospital.

If you’ve got one of those Sacagawea dollars (or a loonie – hello, Canada) burning a hole in your pocket, forget about the lottery. Might as well let it ride on the Oakland Athletics to win the American League West Division.

The A’s are 9-1 to win the West, giving them long enough odds for the payout to generate a strong sense of satisfaction – and buy some chips and dip for the playoffs. Oakland is coming off its first losing season since 1998, a streak that included four division titles and a Wild Card in 2001, when Oakland was second to the Seattle Mariners despite winning 102 games.

Seattle (9-4) isn’t nearly as good these days. The favored Los Angeles Angels (4-9) are vulnerable this year because of injured pitchers and a lack of power in the heart of the batting order. And the Texas Rangers (14-1) haven’t even come close since their last division title in 1999. Go Moneyball.

Baseball, though declining in popularity, is still the easy No. 2 sport of choice in North America behind our lord and sovereign, NFL football. But gamblers aren’t quite as fervent about the national pastime; something about the lack of a pointspread doesn’t sit right with some.

If the moneyline isn’t your cup of tea, what if we told you that baseball is a big pile of cash waiting to jump into your wallet? The nature of the sport makes it very friendly to handicappers; it’s a mechanical game, and player performance is relatively easy to measure with modern statistics. There’s very little teamwork involved – just nine guys out there doing their thing. The manager barely has to move once the game starts.

As for the moneyline, it’s really just another way for the books to balance the action on both sides. Do the math like you would for a game involving a pointspread. That’s what calculators are for.