Ain't the beer cold...

I know what you're thinking. BreezyG comes out from his Fantasy Football four draft enclave fired up and ready to talk about football with the season starting on Wednesday. Ready to talk about how he is still all in on RG3 and how the Ravens will make their usual march toward the playoffs.

Well, you are right about one thing. I am going to talk about the birds. Just not about those birds.

The Baltimore Orioles head into September on a serious roll. They have won 30 of 49 games since the All-Star break, have hit 61 "taters" (baseball speak for home runs) which is 5th in the American League since the break and are within just one game of the Yankees for the AL East division lead. If the playoffs began today, Baltimore would be in. They just took two of three from the Bronx Bombers this past weekend in New York. The Birds get their offensive punch from five guys who have provided 50 or more RBI's this year, led by their main man Adam Jones, who has hit 26 taters to go along with 68 RBI's.

Looking at this team, I'm wondering how the Birds keep winning. For me, they just get the key hits at the right times and good pitching when needed. Just yesterday Joe Sanders, acquired from the Diamondbacks on August 26th, retired the first 17 batters he faced en-route to helping the Birds toss a three hit shutout of the Blue Jays. The win put the Orioles 16 games over .500 for the first time since the end of the 1997 season, the last time the O’s had a winning record. It was also their 29th win against the AL East — a critical stat as the Orioles push for a playoff spot — surpassing last year’s season total with 23 division games still to play.

I'll put it out there right now: While it is too early to dream of Christmas, it's not too early to dream of a I-95 Nationals-Orioles world series. Wow.