It seems you can no longer call yourself a "fan" of a team unless you hate that team more than anyone else.

Sure, you claim to love them, but you feel nothing but contempt for manager, coach, players, mascot, maybe even the batboy who wears "05" on his jersey, not because it's his favorite number, but because that's what year it happens to be.

This isn't a masochistic ritual. The teams are doing it. Chances are your team has done it to you lately.

The Marlins seem to enjoy euthanizing their team every few years. The sales of antidepressants must get a huge boost in South Florida two years after a Marlins World Series.

Cubs fans have suddenly sprouted feathers and migrated south to Comiskey this winter. They claim the love for the Cubbies is still there, but "they want to see a winner."

The Angels decide a compromise on the name of their team would be the best way to make everyone happy. It made nobody happy. T-Shirts now read "Los Angeles Angels of (continued on back)."

The Vikings forget to invite their fans to their houseboat parties.

As fans, we all should be outraged. We should boycott stadiums, arenas and coliseums. We should hold bonfires to burn our foam fingers, T.O. jerseys, Kobe Bryant posters and Barry Bonds bobbleheads. Yet we don't. Why?

Because our dads rooted for the team before we did. Our mom's don't know left field from right field, but they bake round sugar cookies with red sprinkles for seams when our team makes the playoffs. It's all we know.

Our teams have become an extension of our family. They're like the cousin who plays dungeons and dragons at the table during Thanksgiving dinner. We don't really understand them, we may not even like them, but we invite them every year and if somebody tried to say their cousin was better, we'd beat them up.

The owners know this. The players know this. Even that ball boy that falls over everytime he tries to pick up a foul ball knows it. No matter what they do, no matter how bad they screw up, no matter how many years in a row they lose....we'll come back as soon as the clouds start to clear. The White Sox might own Chicago right now, but as soon as spring comes and the weather starts getting warmer, all those birds are going to fly north to the friendly confines once again.