By Jon Weisman

All at once, I feel the need to say something and say nothing.

With the contradiction of a first-place team that’s lost five straight games, my sense is that anyone who would listen to me already knows what I’m going to say, and anyone who doesn’t already know what I’m going to say won’t be convinced. People have had plenty of opportunity to hear my way of thinking, and to take it or leave it.

So maybe I’m just talking to myself here, or maybe I should be.

Here’s what frustrates me. When the Dodgers were at their best this season, scoring runs at a record pace or winning two-thirds of their games, I would never have said they were a World Series lock. Not because they weren’t capable, not because that wasn’t the goal, but because even the best teams can lose a playoff series in an instant. You have to wait and see.

But when the Dodgers fall on hard times, there’s almost nowhere you can turn without people saying the season is over. Even though, as horrible as I keep hearing the Dodgers are, they moved into first place April 17 and have stayed there every day except one.

Maybe the Dodgers are the democracy of baseball — the worst team of the National League West except for all the others. Or maybe they’ll be passed by the Giants this week and left behind forever.

The Dodgers can’t keep struggling to take a lead, can’t keep giving the lead up once they get one, and expect to hang on. After Sunday’s loss, even Clayton Kershaw threw out the word “panic,” though he later changed it to “urgency.”

What I can’t relate to is the insistence that the Dodgers at their worst must be the true Dodgers, that every win is an aberration, every loss is reality and no problem will be solved. I can’t relate to the race within the community to condemn this team — a race that frankly has been going on most of the year on social media.

In many cases, this is just frustration talking, and the fans in reality won’t give up until the last out. But sometimes, it feels like the frustration when the Dodgers lose is a lot louder than the celebration when they win.

Dodger fans have perennially been more invested in their team than anyone outside Los Angeles gives them credit for, living and dying with every game, every inning, every moment. But when cynicism becomes the dominant attitude, I guess I wonder, what’s the point?

We cherish the story of Bob Costas ridiculing the 1988 Dodgers’ World Series lineup and being proven wrong, yet with the 2015 Dodgers, so many have become Bob Costases themselves, the irony lost. The 1981 champions sleepwalked through the second half of that season (27–26) and scored one run in their first 20 postseason innings. Local fans and media routinely trashed the 1965 champions. The 1959 champions spent 21 days in first place all year.

It’s a long season.

While blind faith might not be useful, neither is blind dissent. I would never suggest anyone ignore the Dodgers’ flaws — believe me, no one inside the organization is — but even in the name of frustration, must we ignore their capabilities as well? Clayton Kershaw is as much of a realist as anyone, but he’s not giving up.

Forgive the melodrama, forgive my tired old act, but who will stand with me in the face of hard times and simply say they still believe?