As Exhibit A, Chicago Cubs fans worldwide are in a shock that may last all winter. On Sunday, the Cubs tied for the best record in the National League with their 95th win. On Tuesday, they were knocked out of the playoffs.

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What? Best record in the league over 162 games, then dead in two days? Forced to play Milwaukee for the 20th time to decide the NL Central, even though the Cubs had beaten the Brewers in 11 of 19 games in 2018?

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What happened to the word “tiebreaker”? In this case, MLB doesn’t have it.

The Dodgers and Rockies had to do the same crazy dance as the Cubs and Brewers: play each other for the 20th time to decide the NL West title even though the Dodgers dominated the season series 12-7. Extra games, extra travel, shred your pitching staffs — deal with it, that’s today’s baseball.

Exhibit B: The Yankees, who hit a solar-system record 267 home runs and won 100 games this season, would have been booted from October if they had lost Wednesday’s wild-card game against Oakland, the team with MLB’s lowest payroll.

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Oh, New York won, but things got scary in the fifth when the A’s 2-3-4 hitters came to bat, each representing the go-ahead run. Anyone can lose one game.

Now the “real” playoffs can start — but with five-game division series, which almost ensure ulcers and upsets rather than the less-capricious seven-game series that the NBA and NHL use in all four rounds of their long playoffs.

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Whoever loses Game 1 of a division series is in the same spot as a team that’s behind two games to one in a seven-game series. Mull that. Things get late early. Lose Game 2, too, and it’s win three straight or go home.

As you watch the Yankees visit Boston, the Indians start their series in Houston, the Rockies go to Milwaukee and the Braves travel to Los Angeles, remember what history says: The better regular season team, whether measured by won-lost record or run differential or length of hair, has barely more than a 50-50 chance of winning. It’s not a coin flip. But close. And they know it.

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Things are structured in this terrifying way because that’s how MLB prefers it. It’s exciting; it sells; it’s built for TV and drama. That sounds cheesy. But after watching for years, I’m not sure that the current format can be improved upon significantly. Yet anyone who runs or roots for an MLB team must internalize that of all sports, even the upset-filled Stanley Cup playoffs, baseball is the nuttiest.

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Baseball has come to realize it is unique among the major sports. Not better or worse but very different. And that requires a different kind of postseason.

A maximum fairness format, such as the NBA’s and NHL’s four rounds with seven-game series, doesn’t work for MLB. When you play 162 games, you need to knock out a lot of teams — 20 of 30 — to make all those admission dates worthwhile. You’re “playing for something,” not just a come-on-down-everybody postseason with 16 teams qualifying. Besides, in a short series, there’s little difference between a good baseball team and an average one. If you let the riffraff into the big dance, they might get hot or lucky and go to the World Series.

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If MLB wants to make its October somewhat fairer but also somewhat less alarmingly wonderful, it could make the division series best-of-seven.

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Also, to prevent a repeat of the Cubs carnage this week, you could settle a division deadlock by regular season head-to-head records. If such a tiebreaker should knock a team entirely out of the postseason because its record is no longer good enough to be the second wild card, then so be it.

However, I must admit a terrible personal failing. I love October just the way it is, even though I have seen what damage it can do to a hometown team that might have done better — couldn’t have done worse — if the NLDS were best-of-seven.

No other postseason starts with such a roar. In fact, the baseball noise often starts around Labor Day if even a couple of division races are on fire. The Cubs led the Brewers by five games Sept. 2, supposedly a safe lead. The Cubs went 14-12 — good enough, right? No, not quite. Now, silence in Wrigleyville.

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Instead, the Brewers, who worried about making the postseason then, have home-field advantage throughout the NL playoffs. Did Gio Gonzalez (2.13 ERA in five starts) salvage their season? That’s the same Gio who had a 6.59 ERA in 14 midseason starts in D.C. in which the Nats went 2-12 and sank.

Call me shallow, but the Cubs-Brewers and Dodgers-Rockies doubleheader on Monday was unexpected spontaneous high drama. “No one wants to be in that wild-card game,” the Cubs’ Kyle Schwarber said. “You want to avoid it at all costs.”

How do you beat the tall tale of the Rockies’ week? They played at home in Denver on Sunday, in Los Angeles on Monday, in Chicago on Tuesday and in Milwaukee on Thursday? One day’s rest? They will be fine.

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In the past week, before the first pitch of a division series was thrown, three of the most talented, rich and glamorous teams in the sport — the Cubs, Yankees and Dodgers — all feared that their seasons were slipping away. The Dodgers didn’t even know, entering their last home several home games of the year, whether they could beat out St. Louis for the last wild-card spot.

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Why give up the possibility of such things just for a smidgen more “fairness” in a sport in which the only real test of fairness is a very long season? And even then, as Cubs Manager Joe Maddon said Sunday, “Baseball is such a perfect game in some ways, but it’s taken 162 not to decide anything. Pretty crazy stuff, really is.”

And, almost certainly, about to get much crazier.