Yes, those are the Royals and the Pirates lurking around .500. Sometimes I wonder if fans of those two teams would celebrate even a moderately successful season the way other fan bases might celebrate a playoff berth.

One of the best things about sports is the surge of hope one feels for one's team, especially when they are succeeding beyond expectation. The fan can allow himself to dream, to believe, even if only for a moment, that his team might just possibly see the whole thing...

I had fun with this. The process of trying to be too creative can be a little overwhelming, so I'm forcing myself not to spend too much time on thread updates, trying not to overthink what I'm doing. Otherwise, it starts to feel like too much work.

I loathe sports cliches, but if I'm going to make up quotes from managers, I'm going to use them if I can. The funny thing is that even as I'm writing them, I almost have to recoil.

Oh, and don't think I haven't noticed the...

...be quiet. The Rockies are sleeping.

Three of the teams in last place will finish the season above .500, and one of them will win its division.

Yeah, Jason Heyward: five doubles in one game. Didn't I tell you already that fake baseball was fun? Let's be honest: 20-year-old prospects who can rake like that in the big leagues will put a hop in anyone's step, in real life or not.

As far as the thread goes... I'm still feeling my way along, but as I see it, sometimes the box scores and the stat lines tell stories all their own, with no elaboration necessary. If you know that Heyward is a 20-year-old rookie upon whom the hopes...

...was not playing the game out in sections and then writing them up with the 2010 season in progress. That would have been a lot easier had I decided to make a thread out of this before I played it all out. Then again, I only decided to write about it once I saw it complete, because (I thought) it made for great telling. As it is, I had to rebuild the league standings in-season from scratch. I actually discovered while doing that that I should have paid more attention to the regular season...