>Daylight Savings Time 2011: St. Louis Rams Need That Extra Hour

>I was thinking about this, in the seconds when Daylight Savings Time stole an hour of my 2011—to be given back later, without interest and in a much less inviting neighborhood: Which St. Louis team could care the least about losing their 2 AM? The St. Louis Rams? Right out.

With the NFL lockout officially in session the NFLPA needs all the hours it can possibly shovel into the negotiation engine, and by the time they get it back in the fall we’ll have already missed a chunk of season. Sam Bradford needs his beauty sleep; Danario Alexander only has a limited number of hours before the extended warranty on his knees expires, and the rest of the team is going to be telling-him-so the minute they go out again and Geek Squad charges him full price.
Steve Spagnuolo’s four pillars—faith, core values, character, team first, fear, denial, horniness, wisdom, sleepiness, and depression—say nothing about squirreling an hour of the year away for personal gain. That’s something Plaxico Burress would do, or Randy Moss, or Vincent Jackson, and the Rams have only gone after two of those guys.
The St. Louis Cardinals could stand to lose an hour, but not here in the middle of March, where Spring Training is still exciting and novel. Anywhere between March 23 and March 30, where Spring Training games begin to look like regular season games held in an alternate universe where lacrosse became America’s national pastime, would have been ideal; March 13 just won’t do. (On a side note, if you’re a literary agent I’d love to query you about my speculative fiction novel, Le Passe-Temps National, complete in 100,000 words.)
So after some careful deliberation I’ve decided that this year’s Daylight Savings Time is best suited for the St. Louis Blues, who have not had an especially rewarding 2011 to date. Even Game Time couldn’t get pissed off about a recent loss to the Detroit Red Wings. The Detroit Red Wings!
Chris Stewart has proven to be an exciting acquisition, and Jaroslav Halak is back just in time to make things vaguely interesting, but this isn’t even a rebuilding year yet—it’s that year before the rebuilding year, when the players who are going to emerge from the wreckage are still busy digging themselves out of the ugliness inside Scottrade Center.
That kind of thing makes this last month of hockey a race to the finish. And thanks to George Vernon Hudson, they have an hour’s head start. Unless they happen to be in Arizona.