It's baseball season, not football season.

The Red Sox took a loss last night but they still remain in first place in the AL East and tied with the Rangers for first in the American League.

Tonight they start a three-game series against the White Sox and hopefully they take all three because right after that, they go up against the Tigers.

The White Sox are currently the second-worst team in the American League and the Red Sox need to take advantage of that by winning all three games. The Tigers are the third best team in the American League, only half a game behind the Red Sox and the Rangers so the Red Sox can expect that they will face some pretty strong competition.

On the other hand, no team is as bad as the Huston Astros.

I hear you say, "But Steve, how bad can the Astros possibly be?"

Well, let me tell you, they are bad. They are so bad, the word 'suck' doesn't come close to describing how bad they are. They word 'crappy' doesn't come close to describing how bad they are. I would say that there are some phrases that might come close to describing how bad they are but this is a family website so I can't really say any of the phrases.

They are bad.

They are so bad that as of two days ago, they were eliminated in the the wild card race. They are currently 31 games behind the the leaders in the Wild Card race and there are only 29 games left in the season. Even if they won all 29 games and the current Wild Card leaders lost all 29 games, they would still be 2 games short when the season ends on September 30th.

I can't say that I ever recall a team being eliminated from a potential playoff slot prior to September 1st before.

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These links were selected by our crack staff of link-selecting-monkeys:

• Alabama has a new state motto: "Yes, we are as dumb as you think we are."



• You gotta love Ozzy.



• Only in China (and also probably Florida)



• Researchers: Contributing to the betterment of our society or a complete waste of perfectly good oxygen? We report, you decide.



• Key phrase in this story: "...which can grow as big as rats and devour plants as well as stucco and plaster..."



• Sometimes it's not the story that is funny, it's the headline....



• Key phrase in this story that makes me say WTF!: "Black attempted to remove the cash with a toilet brush and tongs."