It's pretty obvious by now that I've run out of gas. I think everybody has run out of gas. The only thing more depressing than a baseball team playing out the string in late September is a baseball team from which you expected big things playing out the string in September.

It messes up your whole world, and even as you watch it slip away you know that winter is out there in the night, marching doggedly toward the city. In the distance you can already hear the rattle of its drums and see the smoke from its campfires.

In no time at all the 2005 season will be splayed on the autopsy table in a dank basement morgue, and it will be all you can do to make the trip down the stairs to poke around in the cadaver looking for answers.

I don't suppose I'll do much poking around this winter. When a stiff comes through the door with a massive blunt trauma to the skull it doesn't take Quincy to figure out what killed the damn thing. In this instance, though, I'd imagine that even a cursory probe of the guts would nonetheless reveal some unpleasant surprises.

The blow to the head --or the repeated blows to the head-- might be the final verdict on the cause of death, but I suspect that if the poor bastard had had a bit more fight in him he might have avoided the blows in the first place, and he might still be standing, might still be breathing.

How the Twins managed to stagger the last two-and-a-half months without a pulse is a mystery for the ages.

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Since 1982 I have managed to hang in there right down to the wire in every single baseball season. I'm sure if I looked back through my scorebooks I'd see that I attended the last home game of the year in at least 80% of those seasons.

I won't be there this year, though. I've had a hard time being there almost from the beginning. Life has gotten in the way all season, and the Twins have obliged by giving me few reasons to regret that I've mostly stayed home.

They have gone from frustrating to disappointing to just plain bad.

Baseball is, though, a damn hard habit to break, and on each of the previous two nights I found myself sitting down in front of the television and watching the games from start to finish.

That, I'm sure you realize, took some patience I didn't even realize I had left, particularly on Monday night. That 5-0 loss to Kansas City (and the horrendous J.P. Howell) may well have been the low point of the season, which almost made it worth watching. Howell, of course, is lefthanded, but by now it really makes absolutely no difference. The Twins couldn't hit Thurston Howell. They couldn't hit Norman Fell, and I'm not even sure Fell is still alive.

For almost the entire season Minnesota's starting pitchers have had to approach their jobs with the mindset of soccer goaltenders, and it has been depressing to watch. If they give up three runs --or three goals-- the game is essentially over. The now overwhelming evidence suggests that if they give up two runs the game is over.

Last night, at least, with Johan Santana on the mound, you knew going in that the Twins had a pretty good shot at winning one of those 2-1 games for a change. It was big of them to tack on that extra insurance run in the late going.

There is no reason in the world, other than the fact that he has had to labor for the 2005 version of the Twins, that Santana is not cruising towards his second Cy Young award. As it is it's a wonder that the guy has managed to win fifteen games with this feeble lineup. On a decent team, a team with even a modestly competent offense, at least four Twins starters would have fifteen wins.

I will say this, though: This team wasn't that bad. Or, rather, they shouldn't have been this bad. I think it's just been one of those years. Teams have them. Some teams, of course, have them routinely. I don't think that's going to be the case with the Twins. I honestly believe --because, really, what choice do I have?-- that they'll be much, much better next year.

Hell, even now, I still believe they'll be much, much better tonight.