Ya Gotta Believe! Mets’ No No Hitters count up to 73-73

John Maine gave up a first-inning single to the Los Angeles Dodgers’ James Loney Friday night to push the NoNoHitters.com count to 7,373 (“73-73”) games without a New York Mets no hitter.

Here in Mets land, 73 is our third favorite number second only to 69 and 86! (I guess double-zero would place fourth, but that memory is a bit soured by that team across town.)

We passed 6,969 no no-nos three seasons ago, and if our starting pitchers continue to insist on giving up at least one hit each game we would pass the 8,686 mark sometime during the 2016 season (here’s hoping that the team isn’t wearing anything close to Mercury Mets jerseys by that time).

Continuing this off-course wandering into amateur numerology, I’m looking at New York Mets game number 7,396 as the franchise’s first no hitter.

Why? The number 7,396 is a perfect square of 86 (in other words 86 x 86 = 7,396), and clearly 86 is the luckiest number in team history. Sure ’69 was great, but there were clearly greater forces at work in ’86.

So when is game 7,396? If there are no rainouts in the next month, game 7,396 would be played June 24, 2008, against the Seattle Mariners at Shea.

Anyway, back to Friday night’s game. It ended in a 9-5 loss, thanks in part to a strong early relief appearance by ex-Met Chan Ho Park and a 4-4 outing by Russell Martin. Oh yeah, and a horrendous relief appearance by Aaron Heilman, who faced four batters in the eighth and gave up four hits and four earned runs.

On a more positive note, Jose Reyes went 2-4 to extend his hitting streak to 15 games.