Final Week of Baseball Could Bring Spoilers, Miracles and Firsts The calendar flips to October now, to that madcap month when the baseball season charges to the finish. The postseason is not quite upon us, but it might as well be. The final three games of the regular season, in most places, will be fraught with the same kind of tension. Fifteen three-game series remain to be played. No more of those confounding half-games in the standings. Each team still alive has a clear guide map into the playoffs, yet not very much has been decided. Only five of the 15 series have no possible bearing on the postseason. Serious baseball fans should keep the remote control handy, and buy some extra batteries, just in case. Or better yet, set up three televisions side by side, the way Elvis did at Graceland, and keep an eye on all the races at once. And don't make plans for Thursday, either: division and wild-card tiebreakers will take place that day, before the wild-card play-in games on Friday. According to Major League Baseball, a three-way tie could require tiebreaker games through Friday, which would push the wild-card games to Saturday. Here's a look at the stakes in each division. AMERICAN LEAGUE EAST The Yankees and the Baltimore Orioles are tied for the division lead. The Yankees host the walking dead - also known as the Boston Red Sox - for three games in the Bronx. The Red Sox, in theory, should relish the chance to play spoilers for what could be the final three games of Manager Bobby Valentine's brief but exhausting tenure. But the fight seems to have left the Red Sox, who have lost 9 of 10. Even if they do sweep the Yankees, they will finish just 72-90, the reverse of their record last year, when they thought things were pretty bad. The Orioles face the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field, site of last year's final-game miracle, when Evan Longoria homered to clinch the last playoff spot. These Rays need another top hat full of magic to make it in: they cannot win the division, and they trail Oakland by three games for the second wild-card spot. The Yankees and the Orioles clinched spots in the playoffs when the Angels lost on Sunday night in Texas. But no team wants its season to come down to the wild-card knockout game, so both the Yankees and the Orioles will keep fighting. A.L. CENTRAL The season seems to have lasted just a bit too long for Robin Ventura's White Sox, who held at least a share of first place every day from July 24 through Sept. Now they stand three games behind the Detroit Tigers, and have only one path to the playoffs: they must sweep the Indians in Cleveland, and the Tigers must be swept by the Royals in Kansas City. The Tigers" series has an added wrinkle as Miguel Cabrera tries to become the first player to win a triple crown since Carl Yastrzemski in 1967. A.L. WEST The Texas Rangers, the two-time defending American League champions, have still not wrapped up their third consecutive division title. The Oakland Athletics could steal it from them - and conveniently, the teams match up at the Coliseum, where the upper-deck seats are covered, but the fans in the lower bowls should be frothing. Since the end of last season, the Angels have added Albert Pujols, C. J. Wilson and Zack Greinke and gotten a possible most valuable player performance from the rookie Mike Trout, who started this season in the minors. Yet their only hope for a playoff spot is via the second wild card, and like the Rays, they trail Oakland by three games for it. As for the A's, they stand two behind Texas for the division lead. NATIONAL LEAGUE EAST The Washington Nationals host the Philadelphia Phillies, needing just one win to clinch the first full-season division title in their history, including their 36-year existence as the Montreal Expos. The Atlanta Braves, who stand three games behind Washington, are likely to host the wild card game on Friday. The Braves have already clinched a playoff spot and will visit the Pittsburgh Pirates, who on Sunday extended their streak of consecutive losing seasons to 20 with their 82nd defeat of the season. N.L. CENTRAL The Cincinnati Reds are the runaway winners, and they play in St. Louis, where they are expected to welcome back Manager Dusty Baker, who suffered a mini-stroke on Sept. The Reds are 96-63, matching the Nationals for the best overall record in the league. The team with the best record faces the winner of the wild-card game in the division series. The Cardinals, meanwhile, hold a two-game edge on the Los Angeles Dodgers for the second wild card. N.L. WEST The Dodgers play host to their longtime rivals, the division champion Giants, and on Monday they face Matt Cain, a major obstacle in their long shot bid to unseat the Cardinals. Cain is 6-0 with a 2.18 earned run average in his last nine starts, including a victory in Los Angeles on Aug. 22, when the Giants finished a three-game sweep and began to pull away in the West.