This is baseball’s version of Holy Week, and because it is far less common than the cheesy religious hoopla of the same name, its arrival should be celebrated by more than just those directly involved.

It’s the rarest of rare white moose, a true multi-team playoff race, and no, it doesn’t matter that it’s the race for the far less exciting extra wild-card spots, nor that there are four correct answers and roughly twice as many trivia questions. It’s the beautiful chaos of simultaneous events all spilling over into other corners of the world. Or in English: It’s the Royals, Tigers, Twins and Mariners all battling for the two wild-card spots in the American League not yet claimed by the Orioles, and the Diamondbacks, Mets and Braves for the last two open spots in the National League. All of these teams have their obvious weaknesses and their seductive charms and fan bases that simultaneously warm hearts and irritate spleens; the winners will all be both significant underdogs against their first-round opponents and teams with not entirely unreasonable hopes of an improbable run into the fall.

The only really bad thing about this is that there will be no extra game to decide ties before the actual playoffs begin, because MLB secretly hates baseball and not only wants shorter games, but refuses to provide entertainment that hasn’t already been scheduled, sponsored and pre-sold. A 163rd game that would be objectively good for all Americans, especially if it were played during the day and shown on TV in schools across the country so kids could screw up their math homework for the Twins-Mariners game, is being denied to us. This may not be just Rob Manfred’s idea, but he has a contract extension that pays him roughly the equivalent of Juan Soto’s annual salary to be the slightly trout-like, expressionless face of the sport, and so this absurdly anti-fun decision is entirely his fault. He should be shot into the Mariana Trench with his cockpit mate John Fisher. And now for baseball.

There is something undeniably beautiful about the end-of-season standstill that should be enjoyed in all its chaotic possibilities and permutations, as described here. The fun is not in the Dodgers, Phillies, Brewers and Padres, or the Yankees, Guardians, Astros or Orioles, but in the tangle of loud oddballs right below them. And there is one obvious way to make this week a success for everyone, and that is:

• The Royals lose two of three games to the struggling Nationals and then two of three games to the confusing Braves.
• That the Tigers would be swept off the field by Tampa and then – almost unbelievably – lose one of three games against the White Sox.
• That the Twins win two out of three games against the ridiculous Marlins and then lose two out of three games against the Orioles.
• For the Mariners to win three of their last five games against the difficult Astros and the depressing A’s.

That puts everyone exactly at 84-78 and the final day of the season is pretty impressive fun. That’s all we’re asking for, and aside from that one White Sox win, that doesn’t seem like too much to ask. Unlike comrades Anantharaman (Tigers), Xu (Mariners) and everyone else (White Sox), we have an interest in every single team here working against the wishes of the gods, and when we say “gods,” we mean “us.” Hey, go to your church and we’ll repossess ours, then clean it out and turn it into an Airbnb.

The National League race is unfortunately clearer, as the Mets and Braves play a three-game series starting Tuesday night; the raging remnants of a hurricane have added an ominous “weather dependent” to that. If the Mets win two of those three games, they’ll lock themselves in a spot and ruin the whole scam, as they’ll be three games ahead with three games to go and hold the tiebreaker against the Braves, the poorly behaved honey badgers. In that case, it doesn’t matter what the Diamondbacks do except remind people that they got to the World Series last year with an even more pathetic score of 84-78.

If the deities who are currently too busy ignoring important things like peace, justice, empathy, kindness, and the sunburn of all future owners’ meetings to devote themselves to baseball get involved, there’s a path to chaos here, too. For that to happen, the Braves would have to win at least two of their three games against New York and two of their next three against the Royals, while the Mets would have to lose two of their last three games against Milwaukee, and the Diamondbacks would have to win two of their last five games against the witness protection cult that is the Giants and then against the Padres (they already lost one of their games last night).

But even that is more than we need. In fact, we don’t need a draw nearly as much as we need everyone to draw. after SaturdayIt helps that most of the remaining 34 games take place around the same time — in the case of the Mets against the Braves, basic principles of reality dictate this — and whether you’re a multiscreen nerd or an old-fashioned “highlights from other games” guy, this is exactly why everyone is playing the other 2,396 games.

Think about it: What could be better than Sunday afternoon, when all 15 games at Comerica Park start at exactly the same time, the Tigers need to win and send their best pitcher, Tarik Skubal, to the field against a White Sox team that tries to sneak onto the team bus after four innings? Then think of once-disgraced Tigers manager AJ Hinch finishing the game with brand-new mega-talent Jackson Jobe — and at the same time, the Mariners, who also need the game, sending Logan Gilbert to face the clinically depressed A’s. All of this will happen while the Braves and Royals face off in a game where the loser goes home. And then you throw in the Twins playing an Orioles team that’s resting its good players, and the reeling Mets (they have to reel for this to work) against the annoyingly competent Brewers? What’s the NFL got for you against all that, Bengals-Panthers followed by Browns-Raiders? Hell, the WNBA might not even have Caitlin Clark in a dashing eyepatch by then.

Be that as it may, you all have your own ideas of a desirable afterlife, and we have ours. In a world that has spat out Mark Robinson as the new face of an election year, this is our nirvana – to celebrate Holy Week in all its absurdity, if only to prepare ourselves for the impending shithouse apocalypse.