With nearly a third of the schedule already over, baseball is rushing toward the long grind. It’s these three months, June, July, and August, where seasons are built or squandered, with September a berserkers’ challenge to what’s been earned here. Fans and scribes are right to romanticize the summer game, its easy, paradoxically timeless pace. But there are no Lotos-eaters in baseball, no forgetfulness since there is a reckoning for every mid-summer at-bat and inning, which will be accounted for and tallied—you’ll see, when the light turns melancholy and the leaves turn gold.