Here we go, one last time. One final October quadrupleheader unfolding across a flatscreen near you. One last chance to sprawl on your sofa and watch nine hours of must-win postseason baseball, featuring (among other things) …

A “three-pitch” strikeout that never got around to requiring all three pitches … an infield fly that was so invisible, it didn’t qualify for the infield fly rule … and a SpaceX launch, at one of baseball’s most iconic stadiums, unlike any home run hit there in the last half-century.

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So did you catch all that? I hope so. I was told it was a spectacular autumn afternoon and evening where I live. But how the heck would I know? I was glued to every one of those 1,395 pitches that went whooshing toward home plate Wednesday.

And what did you miss if you weren’t watching all 1,395 of them? Let’s fill you in, with one final LDS quadrupleheader edition from us knuckleheads at Weird and Wild Postseason Headquarters.

The Fantastic Four

The Tigers and Mariners kicked off Wednesday’s October quadrupleheader. Will Vest’s club lived to see another day. (Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)

Days like Wednesday are baseball treasures. Well, not if you’re a Yankees fan maybe. But just understand what we (I) got to watch Wednesday.

Four games, all of them potential Division Series clinchers … on the same day? Sign me up for that.

In the 21st century, we’ve had only three other days like that — in 2012, 2019, and precisely five years ago to the day, on Oct. 8, 2020, in the pandemic bubble. Do those bubble games, with zero fans in the stands, even count? Discuss!

But that doesn’t quite capture what this was, because then these four games actually happened. And a day full of clinches did not happen.

Only the Blue Jays succeeded in ousting the Yankees. But the other teams in danger — the Tigers, Cubs and Phillies — all had other ideas. So they’re still very much alive. And a day like that is an official postseason rarity.

Just so you know, if we don’t count days with a Game 5 (meaning somebody has to lose), we’ve only had that happen — meaning at least three out of four teams staving off LDS elimination — on one other day in the last 30 postseasons:

Oct. 7, 2019 — What a wild day. The Dodgers couldn’t close out the Nationals in Game 4 (and went on to lose Game 5). The Braves couldn’t finish off the Cardinals in Game 4 (and also lost that series). And the Astros couldn’t eliminate the Rays at the Trop in Game 3 (so they wound up having to go all the way to a fifth game back in Houston to move on). That left only the Yankees, to do one of their favorite October things — and finish off their annual sweep of the Twins.

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So what’s the moral of that story? When you give teams on the brink another day of life, you just might wind up getting back on a plane to go play a Game 5. Is that where this postseason is leading us? Don’t touch that remote!

East side story

The Blue Jays piled up the runs against their AL East rival.