JUMP-START: Vivacious Leah Niese, wife of Met Opening Day starter Jon (left). (
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She’s the new Met good-luck charm — with a sexy secret weapon.
When Jon Niese pitches tomorrow on Opening Day against the San Diego Padres, his gorgeous new wife, Leah, will be wearing Amazin’ blue panties — just as she has faithfully done at every game pitched by the lefty love-of-her-life.
“I’m the superstitious one,” said Leah, 23. “I have lucky underwear — they’re Mets underwear.”
Leah and Jon, 26, married in January in Ohio after dating for more than three years.
They grew up 60 miles from each other — he in Defiance and she in a town named Oregon, population 20,000.
But they didn’t meet until a bonfire party in 2009 at Bowling Green State University, which Leah was attending, and Jon, who had made his major-league debut the year before, was visiting while rehabbing a torn hamstring.
It was love at first limp.
“He was in a cast from his ankle up to his waist,” Leah recalled. “We just started talking, and he just seemed like a down-to-earth and really sweet guy. We just took it from there.
“The following spring training, I knew I would spend the rest of my life with him.”
She was right — the two have been inseparable and now live in Long Island City, Queens. She attends all his games at Citi Field, sitting in the same seat behind the dugout, and most of his away games.
“I go to every possible game that I can — because he does better when I’m there,” she says of Jon, whose won-loss record last season was 13-9 with a 3.40 earned run average.
But not even lucky knickers can help with nerves. While Jon listens to music on game day (“I know he likes Jason Mraz — it calms him down and at the same time pumps him up before the game”), Leah can hardly watch.
“I’m all focused on him. I’m shaking, I’m biting my nails, I’m so nervous,” she said. “It’s pretty frantic all the way through the whole game until he gets pulled out — so I’m sure Opening Day will be pretty intense.”