Ever Fallen in Love?

After a good night's sleep, I feel much better about things since I decided to call an intervention yesterday. I've often said that if you want to write intelligently on this game, you need the head of a neutral but the heart of a supporter. Okay, I've never written that before, but I believe it to be true and it seems like something I should have written before. So there it is. And I try to keep those two aspects of my mind in constant tension when I'm writing here.

The problem is that I really want this team to win this year. They haven't been as dominant as the great teams of DC's past, but they've shown that capacity. They've paid their dues in some tough games. They've represented DC, and the league, remarkably well. In short, I feel like this team will be cheated out of something if they leave 2006 without some silverware.

Which is something of a problem. This team has no more right to the MLS Cup or the Supporter's Shield than any other team. They don't deserve it, and if they or I start thinking in that somehow we deserve a championship it's an invitation for karma to deliver its finishing move (which is, I think, a variation on Kurt Angle's Angle Slam). I don't believe in jinxes, but I do believe in karma.

So to some degree, when this team underperforms, I think it frustrates me more than it did in 2003. I want this team to succeed. I really want this team to succeed. Perhaps a bit too much.

And I'm sure you can all fill in the lyrical allusion to this post's title. Certainly I bet this guy can, though I'm sure he thinks less of me for having made it.