Hey. We always hope. We're fans, after all. Utterly irrational believers in a cause that breaks our heart year after year.

Hope dies hard. I think hope is the motivating factor for the most pessimistic doomsayers. Each year, hope breaks their hearts and each year they try to protect themselves from hope by marshaling all the reasons to expect the worst. I know that's what I do.

E. Dickinson got it wrong. Hope doesn't have feathers. It's covered with a bristle of daggers.