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Then comes Monday.

The clock radio pops on. Still dark. Always an unpleasant hour. I dig my

head back into the pillow and stare at the ceiling and the feeling -- a

dark undertow of revulsion -- sweeps over me.

I swing my feet onto the floor and sit there for a moment, running

through the whole sickening affair one more time. It had happened just as

it had happened so many times before. The missed opportunities. The

mistakes. The pain.

My team had lost. Again.

The misery of being a Rams fan was always played out on Monday when, like

a bit of bad news that repositioned itself in the morning, I realized

that my team -- whether it was a missed field goal, a breakdown in

defense or a holding call on what should have been the winning touchdown

-- had stumbled again.

I’m not particularly proud of it, but I’ve been a Rams fan since I was a

kid. You’d think my parents would have tried intervention, something.

Taking up smoking probably would have been a healthier habit.

I listened to the Rams on the radio when they slogged it out in the mud

with the Minnesota Vikings. And it seemed to me they lost every year,

painfully, tragically, wrapped in the silence of defeat. The Vikings, the

Cowboys, the Steelers, the 49ers. So many teams. So many defeats.

I was there when Pat Haden took the field, the tiniest quarterback I’d

ever seen in my life, leaping and jumping to see over his linemen. I was

there when the Rams finally gave up on the Coliseum, a forlorn stadium

that -- to me, at least -- was a house of broken dreams.

I was there when the team moved to Anaheim, trotting out old and broken

quarterbacks like Joe Namath, Dan Pastorini, Bert Jones and Steve

Bartkowski. I was there when a guy named Dieter Brock, a thick, short

fellow who’d made a minor name for himself playing up in Canada, took

over the helm and took the team where it had gone so often -- nowhere.

I was there when Vince Ferragamo was the man, leading the team to its one

and only Super Bowl appearance. And I was there when the team, evidently

scared to embrace too much success, sent Ferragamo packing.

I was there when Eric Dickerson electrified fans with his running

ability, winning ballgames by himself. And again, I was there when the

team traded him away for a handful of draft picks, once again having

success in its headlights only to make an abrupt U-turn.

I was there when Jim Everett got his first start, startling fans who’d

gone years without seeing a quarterback strong enough to actually throw

the ball downfield. And I was there years later when he was booed to the

sidelines by those same fans.

Being a Rams fans was a tough road to travel. But I traveled it just the

same. I’d go to the team’s open house every year, meeting some of the

players who were supposed to lead the team to triumph. I bought a Rams

cap, a Rams coffee mug and put a team poster up in my garage. I bought

season tickets, memorized statistics and even missed half of my

daughter’s dance recital when I sneaked out to my car to tune in the

game.

I forgave them their mistakes, their losses. As despondent as I felt on

Monday, I’d be breathing sheer optimism by Wednesday as I looked ahead to

the coming game. And then Monday would arrive again. Doctors have a word

for this. They call it madness.

I should have seen it coming. I lived in Chicago for a while and saw

fathers and sons and grandsons who’d built a legacy out of building their

hopes upon the Chicago Cubs, the lovable losers of baseball. The spring

would start with unrestrained hope. By mid-August, the fans would be

writing off another ruined year. But the ritual never ended and, like a

curse, was passed on from father to son.

One day, the Rams moved to St. Louis. It had been in the works for

months, so it wasn’t a shock -- more like a final kick in the teeth. The

team I’d grown up with, the team I followed through bad times and even

worse times, gone.

For a while I stuck with the team, reading the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on

the Internet, tracking down a sports bar that might actually be silly

enough to pay for the satellite feed, struggling to accept the fact that

a place called “St. Louis” had been grafted onto my team’s name.

But as time passed by, I let go. You might say I was cured. I had no

team. I was free. No more ruined Sundays sitting in the half-empty

stadium with spent hot dog wrappers and shredded programs blowing up and

down the aisles.

Then a funny thing happened. The Rams started to win. A quarterback with

no NFL experience started tossing touchdown passes as effortlessly as a

sea gull swooping down on French fries at McDonalds. A running back who

played for my alma mater became a scoring machine. The team won. And won.

And won again.

I fell back into my addiction, a born-again Rams fan, hyped and jacked,

waiting with confidence and optimism for this Saturday’s playoff contest

with the Minnesota Vikings -- the dreaded rival from my youth.

But in the back of my mind, I know what awaits. The cruelest day of the

week. Monday.

* STEVE MARBLE is the managing editor of Times Community News. He can be

reached at o7 [email protected] .