You get stretches like this so infrequently as a sports fan, you know enough to savor them when you see them. Usually, it’s enough when your team of choice is playing well, winning games, putting themselves in position to contend for championships.
Sometimes, you get something else.
Sometimes, in real time, you see a team that gets on such a roll that what happens thereafter almost seems inevitable. The 1998 Yankees were like that after the 1-4 start, when they started winning every day, kept winning every day clear to Qualcomm Park in San Diego and the Canyon of Heroes back home. The 1986 Mets — who started 2-3 — were like that, too, with a few more dramatic twists thrown into the mix.
The Giants had bookend runs like that, 2007 and 2011, when they kept getting on airplanes and kept playing in unfriendly stadiums and kept winning anyway, all the way to David Tyree and Mario Manningham, all the way to a couple of Lombardi Trophies. That’s the dream, isn’t it, when all of the momentum has a payoff. It happens that way sometimes.
