CLEVELAND: In the Roman Catholic tradition, limbo is not the easiest place to reside.

It's neither heaven, nor . . . well . . . the other place.

It just kind of is — or at least was until the management team decided to shut down limbo and move all those folks (including the billions of Chinese who were unaware) up to heaven.

That would have been a good moving contract to have, but in that particular region no moving vans were needed. It just happened.

The limbo the Indians find themselves in is not quite so easy to leave.

Neither good enough to contend, nor bad enough to wipe the slate clean, the Indians are in baseball's limbo.

And General Manager Mark Shapiro made that evident with every statement he made in discussing the state of his team prior to Wednesday's game against Minnesota.

''I still enter every night believing that we're entering that point where this team is going to go on a sustained run and reel off a bunch of victories and get right back in this thing,'' Shapiro said. ''I go through other points in the day when I question how that's going to happen when I look at some of the things that have happened to us.''

The statement might sound schizophrenic, but can something be schizophrenic when it's merely realistic?

The Indians are in that middle ground where it's not possible to give up on the season, but not possible to believe in it either.

The problems have been documented well, almost ad nauseam.

Injuries combined with a miserable drop-off from some players combined with no pleasant surprise have produced the record we see.

Two starting pitchers are on the disabled list — one out a year, at least.

The three-four hitters are AWOL as well. Travis Hafner is on the disabled list, and Victor Martinez limped off the field after the first inning with an injured right elbow.

Yet the much ballyhooed American League Central is hardly tough this season, with only one team over .500.

''I don't think that anyone's going to run away with our division,'' Shapiro said. ''I think there's opportunity there to get back in it. The first step is to get back in it.''

That keeps the hope alive, even if it is flickering.

But perhaps Shapiro's sharp realism should be taken as a sign that while hope is alive, it's not exactly raging.

Asked what part of him sees the glass as half full, Shapiro quickly replied: ''A very small part of me.''

At some point, the Indians need to either wake up and play, or realize they are just not going to get things accomplished this season.

Right now the signs are not pointing to a revival.

The Tribe entered Wednesday night's game having won two in a row for the first time in a month, but Martinez left the game, Casey Blake made a throw to first that bounced 20 feet short of the bag and Paul Byrd threw batting practice to Minnesota hitters.

It was a microcosm of a season of which Shapiro said: ''There's been some positive things, but the negative things have far outnumbered the positives right now.''

A look at the schedule for the rest of June might indicate where this season is headed. Other than Minnesota, the Indians finish the month against San Diego, Colorado, the Los Angeles Dodgers, San Francisco and Cincinnati.

There's not a winning record in that group.

Problem is there isn't a winning record in Cleveland either.

So the Indians could conceivably put together a good June finish and climb back into contention. Just as conceivably, doves and aardvarks could combine to repair the air conditioning in Aunt Mary's cottage.

If the Indians continue the swoon through June, it will be pretty clear that this season will be chalked up as one of those seasons that was pretty darn stinky.

Hey, at least it isn't limbo.