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There's not much more to say about the baseball itself. For the second year in a row, the opposing team got all the breaks, and the Cubs compounded their own misery by looking like a wreck on offense. The team that scored 855 runs in 161 games in the regular season scored six in three in the playoffs; the team that was second in the league in ERA allowed almost seven runs per.

During Game One, I was angry. During Game Two, which I didn't get to watching until it was already 5-0, I was pretty much just numb. During Game Three, which I attempted to watch from the beginning but gave up on watching consistently once the Cubs went behind, I was angry again. But I already feel numb to the whole thing the day after, although I was in Borders today and saw a raft of Cubs-related merchandise, including caps reading "1908-2008: Team of Destiny" and various magazine covers, and it just felt like a punch to the gut.

What upsets me isn't so much how badly they played, although that's certainly appalling. It's how quickly the whole thing was over, after 161 games that started on March 31, ran throughout the spring and summer and ended with the Cubs running away with a second straight Central Division title and 97 wins, the most since 1945. I threw myself into the team as much as I could this year, going to a road game for the first time in more than a decade, listening to day games on internet radio at work, keeping a printout of the schedule in my cubicle, on which I would write "W" and "L" as appropriate. I'm not going to claim I was the most rabid fan there was - I only went to three games, and just one of those was at Wrigley - but given my other commitments I think I did pretty well, trying to make time to watch the games whenever I could or at least following them online. And I loved this team. Every night someone else was the hero; Soto or DeRosa or Fukudome or Lee or Ramirez or Soriano or Edmonds or Johnson or Theriot or Marmol or Wood or Zambrano or Dempster or Harden or Lilly or even Marquis. Yeah, they had a few bad stretches, but what team doesn't? This was the team that was supposed to have the talent to go all the way.

And then it was just over. We barely even had time to soak up the playoff excitement of DeRosa's home run in Game One when Dempster self-destructed, and the Cubs never led in the series again, rarely even looking competitive. The best post-HR moment was scoring two runs and looking briefly competent against Takashi Saito in the bottom of the ninth in Game Two; of course, the score was already 10-1 when the "rally" started. The Cubs, best team in the National League and arguably the best team in baseball, were the first team to be officially eliminated from the playoffs, falling to the mighty 84-win Dodgers. Even Milwaukee, overmatched by the Phillies and unable to get a win out of CC Sabathia in their Game Two, was able to take a game before falling. The NL Central, which had a claim to having the three best teams in the NL as late as August, winds up with no teams in the NLCS.

Every Opening Day with the Cubs is like a first date with that year's team. And this year's first date, with Fukudome's tying home run in the bottom of the ninth, was pretty special, even if the Cubs didn't end up winning. As the season went on, every Cubs fan was drawn into the relationship as far as they could go. Ask just about any Cubs fan, certainly any Cubs fan under the age of 40, and they'd tell you this was the best team of their lifetime. This team was doing things no team in decades had done. It was the 100-year anniversary. This was the team that was going to go all the way. And then, before we knew it, we'd been dumped, sitting heartbroken in front of the television, wondering how six wonderful months could have evaporated into disaster so quickly. Just as with a particularly devastating breakup, it's enough to make you tell yourself that you're going to swear off baseball forever - all it does is break your heart, and you can't take it anymore.

But just as with that next person we can't stop thinking about, we're all going to be back eventually. It may not be next Opening Day, but every one of us is going to allow ourselves to love the Cubs again as long as they give us a reason to do so. The bulk of this team isn't going anywhere - aside from Jim Edmonds, not one of the key players from this year's team will be older than 34 next year. And consider this - aside from Mark DeRosa (and, you might possibly argue, Theriot), not one of the Cubs' position players had what you would call a career year. Five guys hit 20 home runs, but no one hit 30, even though at least four guys on the team probably have that capability. And while Dempster might have had his career year on the mound, just about everyone else on the pitching staff can be better. And who knows what Hendry might do to reshape the roster a bit in the offseason, maybe trying to bring in another frontline starter or a little relief help, or another outfield bat. This team will be back. It may not win 97 games again, but it's going to contend. And when you consider how long it's been since the Cubs even contended in three straight years, that in itself is a small victory.

It hurts now. I know it does. But you haven't heard the last of the Cubs just yet. And if we've waited decades to get to this point, and survived the agonies and indignities of 1969, and 1984, and 2003, always coming back eventually, always believing that one day things finally would go our way... well, there's a reason they call it "eternal optimism." We're Cubs fans. Giving up hope just isn't an option.

Wait till next year.