He's as frustrated as you are, even more, because he's living it, inning by inning. Cliff Floyd sees the score before he goes to bed, in his sleep, but not in his dreams.

If word from the West Coast hasn't come in by the time he turns the lights out, the Red Sox outfielder and designated hitter flips on the TV first thing in the morning.

It's always the same. Oakland and Anaheim just keep winning. If one of them loses, it only means they played each other. It's a two-team primary and both are destined to win the playoff nomination.

Seems it has been this way for a month, a year, a lifetime. The hottest summer since the 1930s is leaving the Sox cooked, while the A's and Angels just simmer.

''It's every day,'' said Floyd, the dismay and frustration evident in his voice as he emphasizes every day. ''It's not every other day. It's every day. ''

The Red Sox returned to work at Fenway last night, with their hopes of landing a wild-card berth setting faster than the late-summer sun. The night began and ended the same way, with the A's and Angels in a first-place deadlock in the American League West, each with 92 victories.

Wednesday and Thursday nights, as Anaheim hosted Oakland, the Angels rallied both times in the late innings to win.

Anaheim or Oakland is a virtual lock for the wild-card berth. It's possible that the AL wild-card team will finish with more wins than both the AL East (New York) and AL Central (Minnesota) winners. Some wild card.

''I mean, we find ourselves out there scrapping for wins against Tampa,'' said Floyd, the Sox fresh from winning four straight over the Devil Rays. ''And both of them [Anaheim and Oakland] just keep winning, and a lot of times it seems they're beating people up - stuff like 5-0 in the first inning. You wonder after a while, are they really that unbelievably good?

''Or has it reached the point where other teams just figure they're going to lose. Are they saying, `Well, it's over with, we're going to have a good time in Anaheim'? ''

After playing their 146th game last night, the Red Sox are 81/2 games behind the Oakland-Anaheim tag-team combination. The A's, their phenomenal 20-game winning streak brought to an end last Friday, are 4-4 in their last seven after last night's 5-0 win over Seattle. The Angels are 14-1 over the last two weeks - including a 3-2 win over the Rangers last night - a sizzling pace that rendered the Red Sox and Mariners also-rans in the wild-card chase.

If the Sox were to go even a less-than-mediocre 8-9 over their last 17 games, they would finish with 91 victories. Nice work, 91 wins, especially given the collective woes this season of Boston's starting rotation and the bullpen (come back, Guapo, all is forgiven). But still no wild card. Would anyone have believed that in March and April? Of course not. Just as no one would have believed the A's would rip off 20 straight, or the Angels would be riding a .929 winning percentage at the most critical time of the season.

''Ninety wins, that's really something,'' mused Floyd, not accustomed to being on clubs with such riches come late September. ''I've been on some teams [Montreal, Florida] ... well, 90 wins is pretty good. But what those guys have been doing, it just doesn't seem possible.''

We've seen worse here, much worse. To be a Red Sox fan in the late '70s, convinced that the 1975 World Series loss to Cincinnati was a precursor of great things to come, meant perennial, protracted torture in the Hub of Hardball. The Sox won 287 games in '77, '78, and '79, an average of 95-plus victories per season, and only had their '78 one-game playoff with the Yanks to show for it.

They won 99 games in '78 and went straight home, Bucky Dent's nightmare implanted in their brains, after Game 163. That was before the invention of three divisions and a wild card, before 90 wins was supposed to virtually guarantee a postseason spot for woebegones and wannabes.

Headed into last night's action, five clubs, the A's and Angels included, already had reached 90 wins. Another half-dozen, including the Red Sox, Twins, Mariners, Cardinals, Dodgers, and Giants, all stood within easy striking distance of 90. But come the first week of October, three of those six squads will be dragging their sorry bats home, circling mid-February dates for the start of spring training.

''We keep hoping; we stay focused,'' said Floyd, who exited after the sixth inning, not long after being hit on the right elbow with a Rodrigo Lopez pitch. ''Everyone's focus going into the year is to make the playoffs, and that hasn't changed. All we can do is go out there and try to win, and with the veteran group of guys we have here, it's easy to keep that approach. You look back at that bad stretch we had [spanning late-August and the start of September], and that's why we're here now - that, and how those other guys are playing.''

After the 8-3 loss to the Orioles, Floyd said he initially thought Lopez's 90-mile- per-hour fastball had broken his arm.

''Something clicked when I flexed it,'' said Floyd, the elbow red and slightly swollen as he sat in the clubhouse some 20 minutes after the game. ''That's never happened to me before. I guess it hit the ulnar nerve, and I could feel it down into my fingers. But it's OK. No break. If it stays like this, I might have to DH [today].''

By the time the A's and Angels opened their respective weekend series on the West Coast last night, the Sox were already knee-deep in Orioles, still fighting off the undertow of the wild-card race.

''Most nights, they've started by the time we've finished,'' said Floyd, scoreboard watching like the rest of Red Sox Nation. ''You look out there, and it's the same thing every night ... first or second inning, and they're already winning. Unbelievable.''

Floyd headed back to his high-rise apartment after the game, figuring he would catch the final scores from California once he got home. The pennant race, if there is one, is reduced to reading the crawl at the bottom of a CNN or ESPN broadcast, spelled out in digits that always seem to favor the Angels and A's.

''I live on the 18th floor,'' said Floyd. ''It makes me want to throw the TV right out the window.''

The way the A's and Angels are going, the season could be over by the time it lands.

By Kevin Paul Dupont of The Boston Globe Staff

This story ran on page D5 of the Boston Globe on 9/14/2002.

Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.