Dog days

Checking out the baseball standings this a.m., and the exciting news for all Blobophiles is, no, that's not a preface to yet another Blob about the by-now wearisome Battle for the Cellar.

("Stop it, stop it, STOP IT with the posts about your stupid Pira-- Oh. All right. Carry on, then," you're saying).

Besides ... the Battle is over for now. The Pirates, for some unaccountable reason, have actually begun impersonating a baseball team, while the Reds continue to be the Reds, if slightly less hopeless than previously. Still, the Pirates are now actually in third place in the NL Central, a game ahead of (what?) the Cardinals. And they're now eight-and-a-half games ahead of the Reds, so--

("Stop it! STOP!")

OK, OK. I'm done.

No, I was checking out the baseball standings, and what I actually noticed is that the Baltimore Orioles, who are plumbing perhaps historic levels of awfulness this sad summer, are 41 1/2 games behind the first-place Red Sox in the AL East. And it's not even August yet.

Talk about your dog days. There's still 57 games left in their season as of this morning. Which means even if they won every single game from here on out, and the Red Sox inexplicably lost every single game, the O's wouldn't catch the Beaneaters until sometime in the middle of September.

What must the mood be like in that clubhouse right now? Fifty-seven games left in the season. That's two full months and change. And even if they caught fire -- which for the O's would mean, oh, winning half their remaining games -- it would still be a fight to even get out of the cellar, on account of they're 17 games behind even the next lowliest outfit in the East, the Toronto Blue Jays.

Seventeen games out of next to last. Think about that.

Now think about what the O's must all be thinking about right now.

I think I know:

1. Golf.

2. Fishing.

3. Hunting.

4. Christmas trip to Disneyland with the fam.

5. Snorkeling in Aruba/St. Kitts/St. Bart's.

6. More golf.

Anything but baseball, in other words.

OK. So they probably are thinking about baseball in at least one respect.

"Are we done yet?"