In a corner of my mind, that semi-hopeful, semi-bitter cry was particularly associated with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Who for a long time were bad, and then for most of a decade were quite good but couldn’t get that elusive first World Series championship.

“Next year” finally came in 1955, when the Dodgers beat the Yankees in seven games, with a team that featured Snider, Hodges, Campanella, Robinson, Newcombe, Gilliam, Reese, Erskine and Johnny Podres, the pitching hero of Game 7.

It was a huge thing for long-suffering Dodgers fans.

More championships followed, fairly regularly, after the club moved to Los Angeles: 1959, 1963, 1965, 1981, 1988. That’s six championships in 34 years. A person could get used to that.

And now?

After the St. Louis Cardinals defeated the Dodgers 3-2 today, to end their National League Division Series in four games … the current wait for a Dodgers championship?

Has reached 26 seasons.

Meaning anyone over the age of, say, 30 has any memory at all of the 1988 Dodgers winning the World Series.

Move over, Brooklyn.

Where did this team go wrong?

–Not enough starting pitching. Clayton Kershaw is the best pitcher in ball, but he had the bad inning in Game 1, and that left the Dodgers desperate in Game 4, so back he came on three days rest. Not ideal. Was he tiring in the seventh inning, when he gave up the three-run homer? Very possibly.

These Dodgers had, essentially, two good starters (Greinke being the other), a competent No, 3 (Ryu) … and then a lot of nothing much, after that.

–Not enough relief pitching. How many of the Dodgers middle-innings guys did you want to see coming in from the bullpen? Brandon League? Brian Wilson? Certainly not Pedro Baez, J.P. Howell or Scott Elbert. Despite spending $240 million on this roster, the Dodgers were short of pitching, which is inexcusable.

–The lineup depended too much on aging guys with propensity for being hurt. Hanley Ramirez, Juan Uribe and Carl Crawford, in particular. And then there is the mystery who is Yasiel Puig, who struck out eight times in nine at-bats of the St. Louis series, was benched for Game 4 and said he couldn’t blame the manager.

–The manager. Does Don Mattingly inspire confidence? I didn’t like his hiring, originally, because the guy is a Yankee, and the Dodgers shouldn’t hire Yankees. But now it looks like he barely has control of a contentious and willful team.

–The general manager? Ned Colletti has been at this a long time now, and the huge amounts of money he is allowed to spend are enough to get the club into the playoffs fairly regularly — five times in nine seasons. But then the club’s lack of balance seems to come to the fore, and that’s that. (Or they run into the Cardinals, who seem to own them.) I miss Paul DePodesta.

I would feel worse if I were still in Southern California, because it would seem more immediate and proximate. Still, I am a bit surprised that the Dodgers failing can still affect my mood. And I’m unhappy.

You would think anyone with even a passing interest in this team would be neither disappointed or surprised that the club has failed, again. We certainly have plenty of experience with the concept.

Wait till next year! When we can watch the 27th successive failure. We’ve learned to expect it.