I told myself I wouldn’t do it, not this year. No sir, I wouldn’t fall for an April Fool’s joke today.
April Fool’s Day humor is a fairly large tradition in my family, passed on from my grandmother — who one year when I was about 10 years old had me convinced she’d just met John Elway in the Denver airport — to my mother. Just this morning Mom convinced my emotional, reactionary sister Mary Beth (affectionately known as the Meg Griffin of the Reader family) that my dad’s work was forcing him back to Japan in a few weeks, where surely he would be exposed to enough radiation to have him glowing like a firefly by the time he returned home. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall at Meg’s workplace this morning when she read that news and spent the next several hours huffing and puffing around in a tailspin!
But not this guy…no way, no how. And with Jackets tickets in hand for tonight’s game against Chicago, I was especially guarded against the hockey-themed prank that would surely be injected into my gameday experience.
When my ESPN Mobile app alerted me to consecutive Chicago goals and an 0-2 Jackets defecit before I had even reached my seat, I wouldn’t allow myself to be fooled. Ha ha ha, good one, Worldwide Leader in Sports, you almost had me…what, with your fake scoring alerts against my known favorite team! But wait, it was…it was…true?!? (And no, I’m not usually “that guy” who strolls in several minutes after the game has begun — I always strive to reach my seat in plenty of time to scream “Leo!” — but alas, it was a longer-than-usual wait for a pre-game table at Dirty Frank’s Hot Dog Palace.)
I had read earlier in the day that Captain Rick Nash — my personal hockey hero / doppelganger and a known man of steel — would miss a second straight game with an undiscolsed injury, and I could see right through the ruse of those jokesters at the Dispatch. But hmmmm, that too was true. The reported sea of Blackhawks fans swarming upon Nationwide Arena, that can’t be, can it? True! My ticket combo pack, maybe it would deny me the delicious Timbits it promised? (Yes, I bought tickets that came with free donuts, get over it.) No, right there it is….right there inside the souvenir coffee mug, right beside the coupon to fill that bad-boy up with hot Horton’s java, was the certificate entitling me to 10 of those sweet, delicious balls of heaven! Would April Fool’s Day 2011 really come and go without anyone trying to pants me?!?
And then, like a brick wall, it hit me. It wasn’t that I had escaped its clutches; it was that my team, my very own Blue Jackets, had made April Fool’s Day come early this year. Those sly sons of guns, they actually pulled off the mother of all pranks weeks ago!
It was February 25th, to be exact, and the setting was Nationwide Arena for the most exciting CBJ game in recent memory. Led by rookie Matt “Calvenator” Calvert’s natural hat trick, the Jackets roared back from an early 0-2 defecit to defeat the surging Phoenix Coyotes. The team was capping off its best-ever February, had positioned itself within only a game or two of playoff qualification, and seemingly could do no wrong.
Of course, sitting here mathematically eliminated from the playoffs in the aftermath of the team’s worst-ever March, we all know how the story ends. The goal that wasn’t in Nashville two days later was the beginning of the end, and the 0-5 skid on that, the worst road trip in franchise history (Says who? Says me.), would for all practical purposes drive the nail into the 2010-11 season’s coffin.
Nicely done, Jackets, you cunning devils! You duped me, and you duped me good….for a minute there, you actually had me believing. FEBRUARY FOOLS!