Team Mind Games
It's funny how newspapers and fans tend to build up, in their minds, the image of their competitors while giving their own team short shrift. For example, when the St. Louis Cardinals began losing games left and right, the St. Louis paper was all doom and gloom even while they held a 1/2 game lead over the Astros with three games to play. It was basically "over", and yet the Cards went on to win the division.
And now they won the first game of the playoffs and the headline is "Carpenter, Bullpen Give Cards New Life", which is sort of funny since this was the first game of the playoffs. They already had "new life" - they are in the post-season. New life assumes you are dead, and the only dead teams are those not in the playoffs.
Lacking confidence in your team is probably a way to avoid disappointment as well as make any victories sweeter. You can see a bit of it in politics. The Republicans are saying the '06 elections are going to be a huge, uphill battle, while the Democrats aren't prematurely celebrating anything yet.
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