It is not news to you that the West Sacramento Athletics are deeply un-good. Even when they led the AL West in April and May, they somehow managed to do so while maintaining a solidly negative run differential. But since their last day at .500, on June 19, they have been, by both advanced and less-advanced metrics, Galactically Ass. Their three best hitters, Nick Kurtz, Shea Langeliers, and Brent Rooker, are hurt, their pitching struggles to be shambolic, and as a result they have lost 35 of their last 44 games, a winning percentage of .205. Over a full season, that would be the fifth-worst in professional baseball history of any team that ever played a subsequent season, including the first year of the Phillies (1883), and five Negro League teams, including the New York Black Yankees, whose last six years were a cumulative 42-187.

There. We spared you a gratuitous Cleveland Spiders reference. You're welcome.

But while the A's have been baseball's foremost adherents of zombie baseball since that date, that is a role they have played before. More notable is the fact that they may have also gotten a few bites in against the best team in baseball in that span, the Boston Red Sox, simply through physical proximity. It is too early to say whether the Red Sox are showing signs of infection, but their recent stumbles are further proof that, as a general rule, it is poor hygiene to hang around the A's. The A's and their opponents should both be forced to wear masks, and if the owners weren't perfectly fine with an industrial pandemic that thins out the union membership, they would be.

Most recently, which is to say Tuesday night, the A's lost at home to Tampa, 12-4; it was the 13th game in which they allowed double-digit runs in the last two months. The night before, they lost 10-6, by blowing a four-run lead in the eighth inning. But none of this is gripping you, as well it shouldn't. The A's corporate goal has always been to Be Somewhere Else, and if that means ending up like the Worcester Ruby Legs, Keokuk Westerns, Elizabeth Resolutes, or Brooklyn Eckfords in baseball's Phantom Zone, it's no less than they deserve. Nobody of consequence would be the poorer, although it would admittedly be a tough break for Tyler Soderstrom.

But here's how viral they are: When the A's traveled to Boston last weekend and lost the first game 13-1, to extend their losing streak to nine games, nobody much noticed. Why would they? The Sawx had extended their own winning streak to nine with that romp, and after factoring in an earlier 15-game winning streak were on a 32-5 run. During that time, the Sox had gone from 14.5 games behind the Rays—and a half-game ahead of the Angels, to triple down on the abjectness—all the way up to five games behind the Rays and a half-game behind the Yankees. Who noticed the A's during that run? Who would?

Well, the A's notice the A's, and while they may have awful results, the players still care, or at least want to be better. The curse of the management is not theirs to bear. And so they rose up and not only won Saturday, 7-3, behind a strong six innings from Gage Jump—a real guy, you can look him up—but again on Sunday, 4-3, thanks to late-game relief meltdowns from Garrett Whitlock and Aroldis Chapman. Losing a series to the A's is tough enough—and West Sac's last series win was over the Rockies, so draw your own conclusions—but at home? After a month and a half of playing .860 ball? Ick.

And now it's double ick, because the Red Sox haven't won since, dropping two straight to the moribund but not yet A's-ish Blue Jays. That's despite getting the longest-developing run in baseball history Monday night, the famous fourth-out special. Boston is now back to nine games behind the Rays, and the dream, however you define it, is at the very least turning matcha to olive green around the gills.

But more than that, the A's last win before this past weekend was also over the Sox in Yolo (You Only Lose Often) County, on July 28; before the A's sprayed their contaminated selves all over Fenway Park over the weekend, that had also been Boston's last loss. This strongly suggests that the virus the Red Sox caught in Central California seems to have a long incubation period before reaching full virulence. Comrade Imbler can confirm or disprove the CDC's findings on this, but we know what we know, no matter what the president's view on virology might be today. And just for today, it's that even in their state of rampant decomposition, the A's still managed to lurch up out of the grave and transmit whatever hideous contagion ails them to the Red Sox. We dare you to prove us wrong, right after you prove that we don't value time the way we should.