Poll: Are Red Sox spiraling toward another last place finish?

In the immortal words of Yogi Berra, "it's deja vu all over again" for the Boston Red Sox.

For much of this year, we looked ahead to the end of the summer with hope of what could be a postseason run for a youthful and exciting team. Now that we've arrived in the final week of August, the picture has changed just a bit.

The Red Sox are doing what has become custom in recent summers, which unfortunately means an August collapse and a limp to the finish line.

Remember how last season finished? With widespread apathy permeating the fanbase and Sox-Yankees tickets to be had for a dollar? Well, that team was 69-61 on this date, 365 days ago, compared to the 67-64 mark of the current team which has now dropped 5-straight and 13 of their last 19.

The American League's third Wild Card is now a distant five games away, while the basement of the AL East is all of the sudden calling Boston's name, and where the Sox could reside should they lose tonight, tomorrow and Thursday night against Toronto.

It's become the trend in recent years. The final games are played a month from now, but this is the time when the Sox' season comes to an end for all intents and purposes.

While I want to be disappointed at yet another end-of-summer bottoming out, they did what we needed from them - they got us through to football season. So for that, thank you, Red Sox.