The problem with my NHL/MLB teams is...

...that this time of year I can get walloped with a double let-down in twelve hours as easy as that.

It got me thinking about the cycle of the seasons though. There's something about difficult losses that feels just that much worse at the beginning or end of a season. The middle is when all might still be possible, even more so than the beginning, because at least in the middle you've settled in with the team, you know them, and you can tell yourself wonderfully convincing stories about how they'll bounce back tomorrow. At the beginning of the year, early catastrophe can seem like a portent of the season to come, quite irrationally.

And at the end, late catastrophes leave almost no wiggle room for hope. Almost.