Opening Day

F-15 flyovers, fireworks, Dustin Pedroia striking out swinging...life's simple pleasures.

The baseball season has begun, and begins in earnest tomorrow night with 26 teams more interesting than the Yankees and Red Sox. When sports rivalries are discussed, Boston/New York is always high on the list, but with the preponderance of divisional play in modern Major League Baseball, the rivalry grows stale. I've started leaning toward a ~120 game regular season, with all 7 game playoff series', as a superior format for baseball. I mean, the Twins have an outdoor stadium now, how can a November World Series possibly be justified?

The Angels play the Twins tomorrow in Anaheim, pushing Minnesota's home opener to April 14th against the Red Sox. LA will start Jered Weaver, while Minnesota counters with Scott Baker, a mediocre pitcher of the type that seems to frequently befuddle the Angels lineup. Scott Kazmir makes the first trip regular season to the disabled list with a strained hamstring.

I'll probably manage to get most of the game in tomorrow night, at which point I'll make blanket, knee-jerk statements about the overall quality of the Angels based on a sample size of one game.


Kings advance to playoffs for first time since, like, forever ago

In 2002, I was 15. I was anticipating my first driving lessons while attending North Hollywood High and struggling through freshman French and Art History. The Subaru Impreza WRX was barely a year old. I had not watched a baseball game which carried any real significance to me for nearly a decade. My only recollection of hockey was the McSorley game from 1993, and that memory was fuzzy, at best. I had never heard of Northeastern, Nickelback was on top of the charts, and people were still talking about hanging chads. The Red Sox were 84 years removed from a World Series, 2 years away.

The starting goalie for the Kings was Felix Potvin.

This was the last time the Kings made the playoffs.

Since then, they have started 17(!) other goalies, including three who have seen time this season. Goaltending for the Kings has always been a problem, sometimes the problem, but never the only problem.

They'll be playing San Jose, Chicago, or Vancouver. San Jose is ideal, Chicago is mediocre, Vancouver is Luongo, so probably bad for the Kings.