Respect the Streak

At the beginning of April, my friend Tom suggested that we ( "we" in this case is a bunch of friends from the "old neighborhood" ) get together to watch a Mets game this summer.  As much fun as I've had watching Mets games with Tom over the years, I had to turn him down, because as Crash Davis said in Bull Durham "a player on a streak needs to respect the streak".

As some of you may know, the boys and I entered this season a streak.  I'd taken my kids to 7 Mets games over the years, and the Mets had won all 7.  Here are the relevant stats:

5/2/2007: Mets 6, Marlins 3

5/11/2008: Mets 8, Reds 3

7/12/2008: Mets 3, Rockies 0

7/30/2009: Mets 7, Rockies 0

4/24/2010: Mets 3, Braves 1: Blog

7/21/2013: Mets 5, Phillies 0 : Blog

8/2/2014: Mets 4, Giants 2 : Blog

The first 3 or 4 wins were a happy accident, but by now I'm acutely aware of this streak, and I intend to do everything in my power to keep it going.

Of course, I have no control over what the players will do on the field, but I do have control over what games we go to.  I've decide that I'm only going to take the boys to games in which the Mets have an ace pitcher on the mound and the competition hasn't been playing too great.  This strategy worked when we experienced "Harvey Day" in 2013, and watched eventual NL Rookie of the Year Jacob deGrom flirt with a no-hitter in 2014.

So, I had to say no to Tom because I couldn't risk getting tickets to a game a few months in advance and risk that Harvey or deGrom would not be on the mound.  I figured Tom would understand - after all, you've got to respect the streak.

With the Mets playing great and Jacob deGrom looking fantastic in his first 2 starts of the season, I decided that the boys and I would go for win number 8 when deGrom took the mound against the Marlins on Saturday night April 18th, 2015.

I'm not going to leave you in suspense.  As some of you may know, the Mets were in the middle of what would be an 11-game winning streak ( tying the team record ) in mid-April, and the game we went to was part of that streak.  DeGrom wound up pitching 7 scoreless inning, and after some shaky bullpen work, the Mets got the win 5-4.  It was kind of nice that we got to be a part of the team-record winning streak ( I wasn't at the any of the games in the 11-game winning streaks in 1986 and 1990 ), and well as the first 10-0 home-stand in team history ( one of only 7 perfect home-stands of of 10 or more games by any baseball team since 1900 ).

It goes without saying that Ruth and I ( but especially Ruth ) took plenty of pictures at the game, so I'll close by presenting some of my favorites.

Rich