The Stanley Cup

Eight days before the summer solstice, the electric teevee and all the papers are giddy about something called The Stanley Cup. For those of you whose lives have been sufficiently full without knowing what that is, it is a gimcrack given for "hockey," one of the few games in which no one has ever actually seen a goal being scored.

This mistimed irelevancy at least illustrates how badly America has strayed from the Great Cosmic Plan.

God ordained certain seasons, to wit:

June, July, August -- Baseball, with a brief extension permitting the World Series to be played in September.

September, October, November -- Football, again with a special dispensation permitting a contest on New Year's Day which must pit the champion of the Big Ten against some Left Coast pickups.

December, January , and February --  Basketball.

March, April, and May are reserved for sporting romance, the private consummations of which must be neither photographed nor televised. Its public exposure is limited to (a) planning June weddings and (b) bankrupting parents in executing said plans.

Hockey is omitted. It is not an American sport. If Los Angeles insists otherwise it simply verifies the widely held view that it is not an American city.

(If LA  remains intransigent on the subject, a trade can be arranged -- the whole damned city and all of its slurbs for a couple of nice quiet lakes in Northwest Ontario. Plus a draft choice to be announced later.  Perhaps...).