The Battle. Over.

Well, that's that. It's only August, and not even mid-August at that, but the Blob has officially run up the white flag on its popular, one would almost say beloved, baseball feature, the Battle for the Cellar.

("In your dreams, Blob Boy!" you're saying. "'Beloved'! Get him!")

Anyway ... my cruddy Pittsburgh Pirates continue to plumb new depths of cruddiness, adding some throw pillows and a few abstract paintings to the Cellar as they make themselves cozy there. The Cruddies are now 7 1/2 games behind the next-to-last Reds, see. And it's even worse than that, frankly.

They don't even have Aristides Aquino.

Who, first of all, has a singularly awesome baseball player name. And who, second of all, is giving not just the Reds, but baseball itself, a dazzling fireworks show right in the middle of the dog days, when baseball most needs fireworks shows.

Aristides, you see, is a rookie who was little thought of as recently as a year ago by Reds management. Now he's blowing up the bigs. In his first 12 games in the Show, he's hit eight home runs. All eight have come in his last nine games. He's launching so often it's almost become as routine as the sun rising in the east; if it's Monday, or Tuesday, or whatever, Aristides must have gone sub-orbital.

His numbers as a big-leaguer so far: Eight home runs, 16 RBI, a .429 average, seven dingers in his last six games. He even comes with his own ready-for-prime-time nickname: The Punisher.

And while he Punishes, the Reds rise. They're 6-4 in their last 10 games, and have risen to within 7 1/2 games of first in the ploddingly average NL Central. My Cruddies, on the other hand, have gone 2-8 in their last 10 games and, at 49-69, are a full 20 games under water. Right now only the barely-major-league Marlins have a worse record in the National League.

Of course, they don't have an Aristides, either.

Which I guess is good news for my Cruddies. Or something.