Streak for the Cash
I’m up to seven wins in ESPN’s streak for the cash! LET’S THROW A PARTY! Seven is the farthest I’ve gotten.
When Streak for the Cash started, I was actually pretty good. I got up to six once or twice, and five another time. I had a simple plan: only “bet” on games on which I was pretty sure of the outcome. Then I fell into what I presume is a common trap: I saw the percentages that told you who was picking what, and started using those to guide my picks. The result was losing streaks, one after another. I was lost in the woods with a broken compass.
Recently, though, I’ve gathered my wits about me and started rolling. Rick Porcello to beat the Mariners? Sign me up. Ricky Nolasco at the Padres? Let’s do this. I’ve heard – by reading the comment section on ESPN.com – that if you get up to 13, you get a free T-shirt. Or you may get a T-shirt, because they might be out of T-shirts. But I would like to find out whether or not you get a T-shirt at 13 wins by doing it the old fashioned way: earning it.
What I’d really like to do is put together a 30-game winning streak and win a million dollars or something. That would be beyond excellent. I honestly don’t know how people get these things to go so long: most of them are like flipping a coin. Of course, some aren’t (the “Roger Federer in three sets” or “Any other result” was very kind to me through the first five rounds of Wimbledon), but it’s hard to tell ahead of time. I would like to see the largest losing streaks there as well. They’re equally impressive, aren’t they?
As I wrote above, I’m thinking of letting it ride today on Ricky Nolasco vs. the Pads in San Diego. The nice part is that it’s an afternoon game, so I could make a night selection afterward if I wanted to. The bad part is that it’s Nolasco. I picked Ricky for my fantasy team expecting great things, and he sucked it up enough in the first two months that I declared this season lost and started focusing on next year and as such, traded him ina deal for his rotation counterpart, cheapie Josh Johnson (who f*cked my team last year). Now Nolasco is pitching great, but it’s one of those “He’s screwed me all year, will he do it again?” moments. I also don’t like picking against teams at home. There is a reason these streaks end, and many of mine have ended with the road team. Still, the Padres stink. They almost let Jonathan Sanchez throw a perfect game against them, which is a very, very strange sentence, like saying, “I listened to Rush Limbaugh all afternoon and he didn’t attack Democrats.” Sanchez and I have our own history.
The other option today is Timmy Linceum in Atlanta against the Braves, but I think I like the Nolasco pick more.
I was going to write more, but I just remembered I have to transcribe more of an interview with my mom. You read that right.
