This week's biggest surprise in baseball is the continuing skid of the Red Sox, who have now lost ten of their last 12 games, and most of their lead over the Brewers and Yankees in the AL East race. Actually, the slump, albeit of nearly epic proportions, isn't such a surprise. The baseball season is incredibly long, and only the most ardent Boston fan could possibly claim that the averages would never catch up with his precious Sox.

And the averages have caught up, in a big way. When the Sox score only two runs in three games at Fenway and manage only one hit off the Wall in that span, they are in big trouble. Only some magnificent pitching and the Brewers' seeming reluctance to pick up games has kept the Sox out in front.

Of course, it will all end soon, and the Sox will bust out of their slumber one of these nights, probably against the White Sox tonight at Fenway. They'd better be hot when they leave here for two games in Yankee Stadium later this week that have to be called crucial to the Yankee comeback plans.

Unfortunately for the Yanks, they won't start either Ron Guidry (15-1) or Ed Figueroa (10-7) against the Sox, but they have been playing much better of late, making up half of the one-time 14-game deficit. Make no mistake about it; there will be a pennant race. Sorry, greedy fans, no runaways here.

In the meantime the Billy Martin situation has gotten completely out of hand. It moved from the strange to the pathetic to the totally absurd last weekend as the Yankees announced on Old-Timer's Day that Martin would once again manage the team in the 1980 season. It's almost too weird for comment. George Steinbrenner obviously doesn't want to play the heavy, and Martin, apparently in somewhat shaky physical and mental health, wants his job back. Bob Lemon must feel great, and the rest of the club (led of late by Thurman Munson, who has been consistently hot through July) must feel as if they are trapped in a moving looney bin.

And in the other league, well, the story of the summer is Pete Rose's hit parade. There's rooting here that it will be stopped. Joe DiMaggio, after all, was greater than Rose, an admittedly great player, will ever be. And besides, they always said that DiMag's 56-game hitting streak was the one record that would never be broken. Is there no respect for the past? And will Charlie Hustle do it? The guess here is no, on both counts.

But back to The Slump. I can't remember seeing the Sox so feeble at the plate at any time since 1975. George Scott looks pathetic--but you have to feel sorry for the Boomer. It's painful watching Boston's racist fans get on him in particular (although he is in a worse slump than anyone else) when the rest of the team is messing up, too. But Boomer's heroics of late make you wonder yet again about that trade with Milwaukee two years ago for Cecil Cooper. Cecil is 25 and a future great, but for the Boomer the salad days are over.

The only fun thing about the Sox's slump is watching Don Zimmer try to figure out what to do. His club has been on autopilot so long, he must be going nuts trying to think of a way out of it. But it will have to end in and of itself, as these things do, and in the meantime, the race in the A.L. East will continue to heat up.