Rocktoberfest in September

For many teams in Major League Baseball and especially in the American League, the playoffs have already started.

After six months of countless games completed, this final week of baseball is what designates certain squads as post-season caliber or exposes teams as fall follies.

The Los Angeles Angels are first in the AL and cement their place in the playoffs when they defeated the Oakland A’s 4-3 Tuesday night. But there are four teams vying for only three remaining spots in the final week in the AL, demonstrating why fall is when baseball is at its best.

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As of Tuesday, the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees were tied, but the Sox held an edge with a tiebreaker over the Yanks for first place in the AL East. After the Cleveland Indians lost 5-4 to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays Tuesday night, all three teams were tied for the wild card spot as well.

Who has the best chance to win? It is going to come down to a three-game series between the Yankees and the Red Sox at Fenway Park this weekend, and Boston fans couldn’t be happier.

The Bosox have the biggest advantage, in my mind, because they have home-field advantage over the weekend. David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez’s bats will lift the Sox to first place before the season is done. The Yankees are the hotter team coming into the final stretch, but momentum will not be enough to save a team that, until recently, has trailed the Red Sox all season.

These final games are so crucial because whoever wins the three-game series will most likely win a trip to the post-season. The loser of the series, however, will pack their bags and head home for the year, because the wild card spot will probably be out of reach, thanks to the surging Indians.

The Tribe’s hot late-season play and a rising number of losses for the Chicago White Sox has brought the Indians from as far as 15 games to four games behind the lead in the AL Central as of Tuesday night. The Indians also have a small chance of winning the division if they win out the rest of their games against the visiting Chisox.

Any baseball fan would be thrilled about the matchups this weekend. The Red Sox have a chance to send the “evil empire” home for the second year in a row as well as deny them a taste of the post-season.

If the Indians indeed nab the wild card, it will be a return to post-season play for the first time since 2001. If the White Sox secure the title in the AL Central, it will be their first post-season appearance since 2000 and their second since Bo Jackson helped them win the AL Central in 1993.

This weekend, one of these four teams will find themselves without a chair to sit on when regular season music stops playing. Who will it be? We’ll have to watch and find out.