I obviously struck a chord with my admission in today’s Dose that I’m still having a hard time with what happened to the Cubs in the playoffs.

Just when I think I’m out, they pull me back in.

There we were on October 14 and thanks to our GameCast of NLCS Game Six, I can pinpoint the exact moment that I began to lose the will to live. 9:34 p.m. Jeff Conine flies to Sammy to make it 4-3 Marlins after the Cubs had just nine minutes earlier been five outs from the World Series with a three-run lead. And Sammy throws home, allowing both runners to advance. Thanks, Sammy.

But nine minutes before, it’d been all hope and joy.

Then we had the Steve Bartman cameo, the Alex Gonzalez error and the Derek Lee double to tie it.

But we all have that inning seared into our brains. There’s really no need to go back over that again.

But I remember that night when the game was over and I signed off at 10:02 p.m. and went straight to bed. I didn’t want to see any post-game coverage, I didn’t want to hear the radio, I just wanted to pretend it hadn’t all happened. That didn’t work of course. But I was in shock. I knew it was bad, but had no idea just how bad.

Then, we got back to work on Wednesday night and did game seven. I was going through the motions, trying to convince myself the Cubs had a chance and Miguel Cabrera hit a three run homer in the first. Boo.

But then Kerry homered to tie it and Moises gave the Cubs a 5-3 lead. But it wasn’t meant to happen.

Game six left me sickened. Game seven left me numb. Again, I just went to bed. And you know what? It’s just getting worse.

I can kind of go about my day and then something will happen and remind me of the Cubs. Then I see it all again. Prior on the mound with Juan Pierre on second and one out, with the Cubs up 3-0. How do they not get out of that? How do they give up eight runs?

That’s not to say I’m a walking zombie by any means.

But what it does mean is that when Notre Dame gets taken out behind the wood shed on Saturday…every Saturday this fall, I don’t care. I just don’t. I can’t. Even if I wanted to get mad, it just wouldn’t happen.

You could walk up to me tomorrow and scream “Notre Dame sucks!” right in my face and I wouldn’t feel a thing. Same with the Bears. I want them to win, but when they crap on themselves like they did in losing to New Orleans, I just can’t find the venom.

Bill Cartwright is pissing me off, that’s pretty obvious, but it’s hollow.

I mean, I really can’t express how much I just don’t care. Notre Dame could hire Bob Davie back tomorrow and I wouldn’t even flinch.

I can’t even compare this to 1984 because I was 11 years old and I had no concept of how rare a Cubs playoff appearance was. Nineteen years later and I know that I should look at the fact the Cubs have great pitching and a good lineup and that the lineup is almost set and Jim Hendry still has almost $36 million he can spend to make sure that we get another shot.

That’s what common sense says.

But right now 2003 is a failure. A complete and utter failure. I can’t even convince myself that it was as much fun as I know it for a fact to have been. I can’t stir up any goosebumps for the Sammy extra inning homer against the Cardinals, or the comeback from six runs down the next day. I can’t stir up a tear in my eye for the doubleheader sweep that completed the most unexpected Cubs championship…ever. It’s just not there.

Maybe it’s the fact that I spent so much time last summer trying to convince all of you that these were the Anti-Cubs, the team that would spit in the eye of every former Cubs failure, that I began to believe it myself. Hell, I was completely bought in on October 14. And then they went out and cranked the torment up to an even higher level.

How was that possible? How could anything have been worse than 1969 or 1984? Well, congratulations! We found out.

During the Gamecast, Kelly chastised Cubs fans for giving up when game six went down the tubes. But reality told you it was over. That’s not a Cubs-only phenomena. The Red Sox were cooked when they blew game six in 1986, and the Giants were doomed last year when it happened to them in the World Series.

It’s not like blowing a game on a normal Tuesday and showing up Wednesday to play again. You’re five outs from the moment you’ve been working towards your whole life and then it’s gone. No matter how tough you are, you can’t just show up the next day and make it happen.

Jim Hendry said something pretty well in that piece on him in the Chicago Tribune today, “The curse, the goat, all that stuff … five more outs and it could have been put to bed for good. That’s probably the part that’s the most frustrating.

“We came so far probably way quicker than anyone expected, and it shouldn’t be deemed as a negative. But wherever I went in town, there were more people thinking it was a terrible ending than what a good year it was. And I felt that way too.”

That’s exactly what it is. It’s not just the loss of a game, but that game was going to end all of the stupid shit I hate about being a Cubs fan. The stupid goat curse would be gone forever. Really, isn’t that the dumbest goddamned thing, ever?

The lovable loser crap would be gone.

That stupid after championship sign on that stupid rooftop across Sheffield would be gone.

Curses are stupid, but if it turns out they do exist, it doesn’t have anything to do with a goat. If there’s a curse, it’s on the whole city and it was put there by those dumb ass cracker White Sox who threw the 1919 World Series. If anything’s going to get you cursed…that’d be it.

It’s like the line in The Longest Yard, “Son, you could have robbed a bank, or stolen your grandmother’s pension checks. But shaving points on a football game? That’s un-American.”

But I didn’t even care if the Cubs had won the World Series. I just wanted a pennant. I mean sure, if you go to the World Series you want to win it, but I could have lived with any outcome in that World Series. If the game six collapse had been in the World Series and not the NLCS, I’d have been over it the next day.

Instead, I’m clinging to the hope that in February, when pitchers and catchers report to spring training, that it’ll do what it always does to me. I’ll forget all the bad crap and crank up the hope for next year. It’s what we do. We’re Charlie Brown and the Cubs are Lucy. We convince ourself that this time they’ll actually leave the ball on the ground so we can kick it. Instead, every year they yank it out from under us again.

I don’t even want to think about what happens if spring training comes and goes and the malaise doesn’t go away.

I’ve always been just stupid enough to be able to get my hopes up, and to allow myself to get devastated by it every year. I like that about myself. It’s nice to know that there’s a gullible optimist in there sometime.

I just worry that the eighth inning dealt that naive optimist a fatal blow.

I guess we’ll find out in about 100 days.