I've finally gotten around to reading some of Scott Raab's The Whore of Akron... to say it's about LeBron James is sort of like saying Moby Dick is about a whale. There's a scene in it where Raab describes a co-worker named Nicky with Down's Syndrome, who (in the 70s/80s) was constantly optimistic about the Indians' chances. "This could be their year, Scotty," he'd say. Every day. This would drive Raab up the wall, because he knew they'd probably just finish 6th again.
I don't do this because I'm like Nicky. I do it as a defense mechanism, to prevent myself from getting too tense and yelling or sinking down into despair. In a way, it almost makes things worse... I manage to prevent myself from expecting the worst all the time, so that when it does occur, I'm even more disappointed. But I've learned that if you take the short view, things will always seem better or worse than they are. If you take the long view, things will always seem worse, because this is Cleveland and nobody's won a championship since I was negative 20 years old. The key is to find a happy medium. So, three positives...

1. Esmil Rogers may not feel like a great acquisition, but you never know... he can do more than an inning, and he can throw hard, and he looked great today. And his name sounds like a spaceship captain or a an aristocrat scoffing at Phileas Fogg.

2. Jose Lopez turned on a 100 mph Aroldis Chapman fastball and the Indians finally took advantage of the ridiculous tinyness of the Great American Ballpark. And, if we were going to lose anyway, Chapman is enjoyable to watch on an abstract level.

3. Don't panic... the Indians are a game and half out. You may think they look terrible, but all that's happened is they've lost two in a row. You think this is the beginning of a downward spiral? It's possible. But, as Dustin Brown said on live TV immediately after winning the Stanley Cup as an 8 seed a couple days ago, "that's why we fucking play." Indeed, Dustin. Indeed.