Major League Baseball says it has scheduled every game of regular season's closing day to start at the same time because it hopes to elevate the excitement of the day, with five playoff spots now up for grabs in each league.
MLB chief operating officer Tony Petitti, speaking to the Los Angeles Times, said the league hoped to "maximize" the day in the event multiple meaningful games go down to the wire.
"If a game impacts another game, they're all occurring at the same time, so no team would be put into a lame-duck situation because their fate already had been decided by an earlier result," Petitti told the newspaper.
First pitch for Oct. 4 games is scheduled for 3 p.m. ET.
