Kings Gameday: Opening Day

Ugh, it's baseball season already. Ever since 2010, my schedule of baseball-to-hockey viewing has been a little thrown off. Typically it blended perfectly together of the Kings falling far out of contention by around Spring Training, and then the Dodgers being a non-factor in September to let me get excited for the upcoming hockey season. Throw in a few weekends of football and futball along with some basketball, and I had enough sports to go around.

Not anymore though. Since the Kings decided to (usually) be a playoff team lately, I routinely am late to the Dodgers party, and the Dodgers are cruelly giving me just enough hope that I have no idea what the Kings are up to until, well, like the second week of October. Last year was sorta of nice because they both wrapped things up right as the other team was starting. But that's not to be this year.

Except for Canada it is! They got absolutely no playoff watching to do this spring so they can focus solely on their new sport that they claim to be theirs: BASEBALL. Ah yes Canada and ball battering. The North and the sandy base bags. America's hat and televised Valium. Historically the perfect couple.

Except of course baseball is America's pastime. But since the USA has taken hockey over entirely from Canada and bettered it (as we are wont to do with most foreign products), our frozen neighbors are trying to get behind a new sport. Fuck knows it isn't basketball with the Toronto Raptors. Sure, they may be high in the standings now, but you know they are looking at a five game series defeat to an American Rustbelt team. Drake will try and convince them they have a great shot, but Canada as a whole is already defecting to another American dominated sport.

It makes sense though. You can't go with any football teams since you have to have your own weird little league up there where you have five downs, the football is actually a greased up moose baby, and the games are played in a driveway. No, Canada has chosen to rally around the Toronto Blue Jays. Sure, it makes more sense for Vancouver locals to support the Seattle Mariners. Sure, all of Alberta loathes Toronto the rest of the year. Sure, Montreal will whine their asses off about getting the Expos back to no avail. But it's their pastime!

Baseball didn't exist in Canada for nearly 25 years, and finally returned last year! Just ignore the fact the Jays had been toiling away those two plus decades being the step ladder for the Yankees, Red Sox, and even the Rays' World Series appearances. But now Canada is ready to rally behind their team like Winnipegians did with the Jets. You know! Show up for a while, then go back to ignoring them entirely once they drop below .500 in May. Then Canada will try and get excited about soccer. Montreal meanwhile will lose out on the Expos, be asked to settle for a AA minor league team, and watch as Nashville and Portland get awarded expansion teams.

However, the Jays losing won't even come close to matching the despair in Toronto though when Steven Stamkos signs with the New Jersey Devils.

Prediction: Both Los Angeles teams lose on the road to an inferior team trapped in mediocrity who happens to reside in a very pretty city along the Pacific coast. Homer by Puig. Goal from Lucic.