It's Opening Day in Los Angeles, a religious holiday if ever there was one. But don't take the day off on the Dodgers account, at least not unless you're one of 56,000 digital ticket-holders lucky enough to be there in person.

OK fine, if you're a Time Warner Cable customer, go ahead and play hooky. Watch the game at home, along with the 30 percent of your Southland neighbors who actually have access to the team's new SportsNet LA channel. See if I care.

]Because the rest of us, looking to keep a string of Opening Day experiences intact, are shit out of luck. After the Los Angeles Times' Joe Flint broke the story about DirecTV ending negotiations with TWC yesterday, the News Corp-owned satellite company denied that they'd washed their hands of the whole affair for the 2014 season, and the obligatory posturing continued with parties on all sides soiling themselves in one manner of speaking or another.

L.A.'s baseball fans – the 70 percent of them set to look at a blank screen when the Dodgers and Giants open the home schedule this afternoon – are just plain pissed, and for good reason. Those old enough to remember what a treat it was to get nine Candlestick games per year on the tube can get misty-eyed recalling the other 153 games listening to Vin Scully on radio only, perhaps sitting at a table while keeping score. But everybody else is just plain pissed.

I'm told by a partial but reliable source that DirecTV did in fact walk away from the negotiating table but is welcome to walk on back. And I'll continue to say what I've said all along, that a provider will blink eventually, and the dominos should fall from there. Perhaps someone caves during the weekend, with others following suit, say, by April 15, and the issue goes away with little permanent damage done.

If not, if we're looking at an extended period of tubeless Blue nights, well then, it's “Katy, bar the door,” as Don Drysdale would no doubt say. Heads must roll!

But let's cross that bridge to nowhere when we get to it. So it's not time for Dodger baseball. Not just yet; not this afternoon. Not for most of Los Angeles. Not on TV, anyway.

It's still the Dodgers and the Giants, however, from Chavez Ravine at 1:10 p.m. Listen to Scully for the first three innings, with Charley Steiner and Rick Monday taking you the rest of the way on KLAC, 570 AM on your radio dial. Hyun-Jin Ryu versus Ryan Vogelsong.

And remember, glove conquers all.

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