Thursday, January 21, 2010

Yanks play key role in baseball's great streaks

The MLB Network had a great special this week called MLB Remembers: Baseball Oddities, Crazy Games and Streaks. They showed fantastic clips from quirky events in baseball that many young fans didn't know about such as Cubs outfielder Rick Monday saving the American flag from being burned on April 25, 1976 (four days after I was born!).

Another story featured in the special was the Disco Demolition Night fiasco on July 12, 1979 at Comiskey Park. What started out as a silly promotion eventually forced the second game of a doubleheader to be forfeited, the last one forfeit in the American League.

But my favorite part of the special was the last third of the show, which highlighted the greatest baseball streaks. The Yankees played key roles in several of those streaks, including Joe DiMaggio's 54-game hitting streak and Lou Gehrig's consecutive games played streak, broken by Cal Ripken Jr. Quite fittingly, Ripken ended the streak in a 1998 game against the Yankees, to the applause of Jorge Posada and other Yankee players. The special showed the Yanks taking their rightful place in the middle of some of the greatest moments in baseball history.

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