After taking advantage of the American League's worst teams in August, Boston now goes up against three of the hottest clubs.

01:00 AM EDT on Monday, August 30, 2004

BY SEAN McADAM
Journal Sports Writer

BOSTON -- This week and next, schoolchildren from all over New England will return to the classroom. No more lazy days of summer. No more sleeping late. No more lounging by the pool or at the beach.

Summer vacation, in other words, is over.

So it is with the Red Sox, too.

For the past month, the living's been easy for the Sox, who've wisely taken advantage of the schedule to put together the kind of streak everyone thought they were capable of constructing.

With only one August game remaining, the Red Sox have posted a 20-7 record in the month, tops in the American League. They've won 6 in a row, 12 of 13, 15 of 18 and 18 of their last 22.

They've turned their season around, taken the lead in the wild-card chase and reintroduced themselves into the A.L. East race. They've reshuffled their lineup, improved their infield defense and created a loose, energetic clubhouse atmosphere.

But they've done all this while beating up on a handful of the worst teams the American League has to offer. Since the day after The Trade, the Sox have had the good fortune of playing Tampa Bay seven times, Detroit seven times, Toronto six times and Chicago six times.

Of those four teams, only the White Sox owned a winning record at the time -- but just barely. The White Sox were never more than three games over .500 at any time while playing the Red Sox, were never higher than third in a mediocre division and have since managed to play themselves out of contention in both the A.L. Central and the wild card.

Now comes the hard part.

Starting tomorrow night, the Red Sox will play nine consecutive games against three of the hottest teams in baseball -- Anaheim, Texas and Oakland. While the Sox went into yesterday with the league's best winning percentage in August (.731), the Angels were just a tick behind at .720 and the A's weren't far off at .680.

Even Texas, which has dropped from the A.L. West lead to third place, has posted a winning record and remains just three games back in the wild-card contest.

Gone will be Jason Johnson, Mark Hendrickson and Justin Miller. In their place? Mark Mulder, Bartolo Colon and Kenny Rogers.

It's one thing to bludgeon the teams you should beat. It's another to come out on top against teams of roughly equal talent.

"You've gotta beat these [upcoming] teams to advance [to the postseason]," said Johnny Damon. "And all of those teams are definitely capable of beating you. We're facing stronger starting staffs, more horses. But I think we're capable of stepping up. I think we're capable of beating any team.

"We get to see what we're made of. We're looking forward to the challenge."

As they should. This isn't just a more successful team than a month ago; it's a better team. They're more fundamentally sound, deeper on the bench and better positioned in the bullpen.

They're winning games without hitting homers -- a three-game homerless streak was snapped yesterday -- and their starters are routinely taking them into the seventh and eighth innings.

"From where we were to where we've come," said Terry Francona, "the biggest thing of all is the way we're playing. We're playing good baseball right now."

Life is good. But it's also about to become more difficult.

Or is it?

"I don't want this to come out wrong," said general manager Theo Epstein after the Sox completed their sweep of the Tigers, "but sometimes it's easier to play with 100 percent focus and intensity against the better teams. It's hard to go win six out of seven from the Detroits and Torontos. People downgrade the streak we're on because of the competition we've faced.

"But I look at it another way -- we didn't let up, we didn't give games away. And the one game we lost, we lost because [Toronto's] Ted Lilly pitched a great game. We should be able to take that same intensity to these next few series."

Although Epstein takes issue with the premise, he won't fault the math.

"There's no doubt," he said, "the importance of the game is changing. Every game is a two-game swing [in the wild-card standings]."

Summer is over. Let the hard work begin.