This is the last weekend of the regular season in pro baseball, and there's a spectacular story in progress back east. The New York Mets, who not too long ago were absolutely dominating their division, now find themselves on the brink of not making to the playoffs. Their primary nemesis (if you don't count themselves) is the pesky outfit from Philadelphia known as the Phillies.

If you like sports drama but you don't have all summer to follow the baseball version of it, here's a story you can catch over just a few days. In the National League, where the Mets and Phils play, there are seven teams still alive for four playoff berths. The Mets and the Phils will get one of the berths, and maybe even two. The other teams are the Chicago Cubbies(!), the Milwaukee Brewers, the Arizona Diamondbacks, the San Diego Padres, and the Colorado Rockies (who have won 11 straight games to come back from the dead). There could be a head-to-head one-game showdown on Monday. Indeed, in one scenario, there would be four days of crazy showdown games before the "regular playoffs" start. Or it could all be sorted out by tomorrow.

San Diego and Milwaukee will be televised this afternoon at 5; Fox will have that same matchup tomorrow afternoon at 12:55, but they'll also be trying to cover the Phils (vs. Washington) and the Cubs (at Cincinnati) at the exact same time. Sunday is pro football day, and I don't know which, if any, baseball contests will wind up being covered.

Here's a widget that I've cannibalized to see if we can get a live "ticker" going here for this afternoon and evening (times are Eastern). No warranties on whether it will work. (There's also a scoreboard of sorts, with final scores only, way down the right sidebar of our main page.)