… and now for something completely different

By: Sean | October 6th, 2010

Hello there, no one in particular. It’s been a while.

I’m in this hammerlock. See, I’ve written about the Chicago Fire Soccer Club in this space a couple of times now, and each time, my increased scrutiny has been followed by a pronounced funk.

Understand, I’m a modern person. I can repeat “correlation does not equal causation”; I read a text, I imagine the narrator. Supporting a club isn’t a modern stance. I could stand and shout next to Piltdown man and both of us would feel right at home. That part of me STANDS AND SHOUTS THAT I AM JINXING THE TEAM.

I know I have nothing to do with the Fire’s collapse down the stretch this season. It’s the tides, and the stars, and McBride getting on, and de los Cobos looking for the exit already, and Conde throwing in the towel by running over the other guys. It’s fate, and Castillo making excuses, and Freddie caught between two systems. It is what it is.

I just find it hard to feel otherwise than this: I contributed. Somehow, someway my words tilted the balance. (The moon comes up, I feel its gaze upon me, its female power. ‘Did I make it go away before?’ my prehistoric fan-brain wants to know.)

And so, for the remainder of this blighted season, this blog proposes to chronicle, in detail both hallucinatory and (potentially) gruesome, the experience of a true believer very far from the promised land. Analysis? Lineups? A Jedi craves not these things.