Mister Faded Glory | www.misterfadedglory.com

At what point, already enduring a week-plus of excruciating baseball — replete with injuries to key players, bonehead plays, inexplicable slumps, thousands of walks, ridiculously aggravating injuries — do you allow yourself, a fan, to contemplate that the lightning may no longer be in the bottle? The window may actually be slamming shut. The karma and luck finally reversing, age rearing its ugly head, and any means regressing to the, uh, mean.

Would these thoughts occur during a game in awful Chase Field, the bane of the Cubs’ existence? Would they occur during yet another abysmal offensive performance? After our heroes were unable to muster no more than two hits through seven innings against inimitable nemesis Doug Davis? Is that when?

It’s probably not, right? I mean, the team isn’t whole. They’re only .500, and it’s not as though they won’t go through poor streaks during the year. Soto and ReJo and Gamer and Lee are bound to hit a little better, right? And for some reason, Chase Field owns us, and for some reason, we always play poorly against Arizona. (That goes double for our next opponent, Florida.)

And finally, if I whined to the point of abandonment each time a soft-tossing lefty dominated the Cubs with ease, I’d have turned in my fan card years ago.

Still, am I the only one who thinks everything feels a bit off? Even from day one.

Like we have no momentum or continuity or any of the above. Even the fan experience feels more hollow. Only a year has passed; it’s already more annoying to follow – and enjoy – the Cubs: MLB Gameday is excruciating, Gameday audio is horrific, The Daily Herald is gone, WGN barely exists, the Trib is terrible and the Sun-Times is worse, all Cubs blogs jumped the shark eons ago (Seriously, Cub Reporter? There’s more fucking posts blathering about Jake Fox than anything major-league.).

Overall, it just seems like nothing is quite as fun as the last two seasons? Or even like 2003 or 2004? Even the early comeback victories remind me simply of smoke-and-mirrors, too many walk-offs and late breaks and lucky wins to feel good about anything. It jus doesn’t feel, I don’t know, right. Does it?

It’s just me, right? It’s still early, right?

That’s what I thought. (Gulps.)