Five stages

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. The five stages of grief, and the life of a Braves fan. In the past month I have gone through all of those stages as I have contemplated the utterly spectacular collapse of the warriors of the Chatthoochee, turning the Ted into a highbrow shit farm. For a long time I simply did not look at the sports page. Why should I? There was nothing in there but bad news, depressing news, stick a revolver into your mouth kind of news.

The denial was easy, simply stop paying attention until they started winning again, while periodically sticking my fingers in my ears and singing lalala lalala can't hear you lalala lalala. Next came the anger, this is where my Chris Reitsma voodoo doll came from. The more saves he blew the closer the needles got to his crotch. (I really had some issues) The bargaining was just that, believing that Shurholtz would trade our way out of this pit. (Is Fred McGriff still available?) Eventually it got to the point of searching the Atlanta yellow pages for a fung shui expert to go over Turner Field with a fine toothed comb.

Then the depression hit hard. I started making bets with myself as to how many runs the new Richmond flavor of the week would give up, and weather or not he would curl up into the fetal position on the mound before Bobby would have to waddle out onto the field yet again. Finally acceptance arrived and I owned up to the fact that I was the fan of a bad baseball team. In a strange way it was liberating. No more constant trips to ESPN.com, no more rushing home to catch Baseball Tonight, my October would belong to me and me alone...I was free.

Then the Bravos won 5 of their last 7, taking 2 out of 3 against the Cardinals no less. Chipper is batting over .300 again, Giles is riding a 9-game hit streak, and somehow the bullpen isn't blowing it the way they used to. Could this be the rebound from rock bottom? Perhaps the season isn't over after all. Or perhaps I have simply regressed back to the denial stage.