The longer I watch the 2010 Cardinals, the more I am convinced that for the overall good of my churning stomach, I ought to simply close my eyes. Yet the longer this season goes, the more certain I am that what I'm witnessing is some sort of irresistibly rocky reality TV show: You really want to avert your eyes, but you never can for fear that you're going to miss something wild or crazy, brilliant or bad, special or unpredictable, rejuvenating or revolting - or perhaps all of the above.

They're up, they're down. They're alive, they're dead. They're in control, they're teetering on collapse. The trouble I'm having, though, is figuring out just what sort of reality show this is. Is it "Survivor St. Louis," the gritty story of a band of feisty tough guys trying their best to overcome all the heartaches, heartbreaks and headaches that come over the natural course of a rugged, promising but injury-marred 162-game season (see: this latest three-game winning streak, including Monday night's 10-2 mashing of the woeful Pittsburgh Pirates)?

Or is it something a bit more comical and grotesquely flawed, like "Keeping Up with the Kardash-inals," a goofy, side-splitting, up-one-minute, down-the-next tribute to modern family dysfunction (see: falling apart last week at home against the Cubs and the Brewers after crushing the first-place Reds)?

So as we tune in to this latest episode, what do we see? It's a suddenly hot (or is it a hot flash?) team showing another glimpse of its once-dominant self, coming off two consecutive victories on the strength of wicked starting pitching and timely hitting. They piled on the Pirates with a 14-hit, 10-run barrage and got a much-needed decent outing from Kyle Lohse. Five really strong innings followed by only one rocky one was the sort of encouraging appearance the Cards needed to see out of Lohse if they are going to finally provide some confidence in the back end of the pitching rotation.

The Cards are more than good enough to win this division, and it's about time they start playing like it. The clock is ticking on this confusing season, and with 40 games remaining, isn't it time they finally define themselves as a contender or a pretender?

I don't know what they are, and I'm not sure they know, either. But it's time to find out. Actually, it's way past time to find out. Even with the frustration of the past week, the Cards are still in an ideal position to finish off the season strong.

You think they're out of it after that ugly week at home? Think again.

While Cincinnati is on the West Coast playing good teams like San Francisco before coming into St. Louis next week for a Labor Day weekend showdown for the NL Central lead, the Cards are rushing into another part of the soft underbelly of the late-season schedule - a 10-game road stretch against Pittsburgh (42 games under .500), Washington (minus-18) and Houston (minus-15) - that gives you the reasonable hope that maybe there still can be a happy ending to their season after all.

The Cards can take care of business on the road and return home hot on the Reds' heels. Or the way things have been going lately, they could just as easily return home dragging on the verge of collapse. Does anyone dare to feel secure enough to declare which version of these '10 Cards will show themselves now?

A few days ago, there was a very popular perception that part of the problem with this team was that it was too easily distracted. There's been more than enough evidence lately that the Cards can lose focus at the most inopportune times, yet rise into a wildly competitive froth against the better teams in the league.

So when someone asked Cards ace Adam Wainwright recently if he felt there was a need to "buckle down," he immediately rejected the concept.

"There's no buckling down," he said. "We're already buckled down. If you've got to buckle down more, you're not buckled down enough."

And while if you listened very closely, this sounded very much like Wainwright was channeling Yogi Berra, you kind of got his message.

It's late, people, and the Cardinals know it.

And the Cards can't be thinking about wild cards. Why worry about climbing over two teams (Philly and San Francisco) when the direct path (the NL Central title) has only one team providing a road block?

Every night I watch them play, I still see something that gives me hope that the Cards will find a way to win the division. But I also see just as many things that make me curse them to the baseball gods.

And I'm pretty sure you're right there with me, which is why even on those most discouraging evenings when you're walking away from the ballpark or your TV set cussin' to the sky and swearing that you will never allow them to twist your guts into a pretzel again, aren't you almost immediately thinking, "Boy, what time is tomorrow's game?"