Inexplicable optimism

For the last couple of days, while doing my usual (and, as usual, mostly futile) combing of the intertubes for information on our Fire, I realized something strange: I’m not feeling dour about this team.

Whowhawhuh? This is not the way of things. I was raised in northern Indiana, where our local high school basketball team got fed to one of the big schools from Lafayette in the first two games of the tournament, year after year after year. And I was raised a Cubs fan, which means I root for a baseball team working on its second century of futility.

So this feeling, this optimism – what’s that about? What has my spirits rising about the Fire’s incipient season? While working the last couple of days, the question’s bothered me. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far, a sort of Top Four Reasons To Have Hope for ‘08.

1.) Chris Rolfe is the bomb, and he’s got a lot to prove this year. If he wants to be part of World Cup qualifying – and you know he does – he needs to display the goods now. Look for Rolfe to come out of the gate strong.

2.) Blanco is the real center of this team now. Last year, Temoc would gesture and someone – usually Chad Barrett – would go just the wrong way. I’m assuming here that another several months of work together will, at the least, make Señor White’s gesticulations clearer to his teammates.

3.) Justin Mapp. Justin Mapp. Justin Mapp.

4.) Jon Busch, if he’s healthy, could be captain material – vocal, demanding, and good. He seems to be healthy!

Good lord, this optimism thing is strange. I feel dizzy.

Fortunately, the complete lack of information from the Fire on their preseason will allow my native pessimism to reassert itself shortly. But for now, I’m giddy and excited. Dale Fire!

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