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The White Sox took three out of four from the Red Sox over the Labor Day weekend, doing unto Boston what Boston did to them at Fenway from August 24-27. I'm afraid it's too little too late. Even with the recent surge, the White Sox still trail the Tigers by 7.5 games, and Detroit has a Magic Number of 18 vis-a-vis the Sox. That means that if the Tigers play .500 ball over their last 26 games, the Sox will have to go 19-4 in their remaining 23 games to tie Detroit at 88-74. We pretty much know 19-4 isn't going to happen -- not for most teams and especially not for a team that's still a game under .500 for the season.

But what about sweeping the Tigers? That'll work, won't it? Not really -- for two reasons. First, a sweep closes the gap by only 6 games, not the 7.5 by which the Sox currently trail Detroit. So, that's not enough. Second, the odds of the Sox sweeping the Tigers are so small as to be non-existent. Using the Bill James Log5 method of estimating the likelihood that a team with a .496 winning percentage like the Sox will defeat one with a .555 percentage like the Tigers in a single game yields a 44.5% chance. Taking that likelihood to the sixth power to roughly approximate a 6-game sweep gives you a less than 1% chance to pull it off.

The moral of the story is don't give up, but don't be crazy about it. The chance of the Sox catching lightning in a bottle can only be described as remote, but it sure would be sweet.

By the way, we had a great time in Chicagoland over the weekend celebrating grandson Evan's first birthday. Especially the smash cake that the bakery gives the birthday child who's turning one, to go along with the real cake that you buy. It functions just like it sounds. One year olds like to smash things and the cake made a good target. His other grandparents gave him a Red Sox knit hat. I'd been refraining from loading the little guy up with Sox stuff, but the game is on now. Go Evan! Go Sox!