CHICAGO — The wildest ending Major League Baseball could’ve scripted is playing out in ballparks across North America, with tight division and wild-card races in both leagues entering the final weekend.

Teams such as the New York Mets, Detroit Tigers and Houston Astros are trying to avoid the dreaded choke label, knowing everything goes back to zero again Tuesday if they can only get into the postseason.

The Chicago Cubs are sweating again, days after their wild-card clincher, with a five-game losing streak entering Wednesday and yet another injury to stress over.

A long and bumpy ride has brought us to this moment, and baseball fans can rejoice. Here’s what we know as the drama unfolds.

It’s human nature to take a deep breath and celebrate after accomplishing a major task, but it’s not as easy getting back to the same goal-oriented mode afterward. The Cubs discovered that after clinching a wild-card spot in Pittsburgh, then getting swept by the Cincinnati Reds and letting a five-run lead go to waste in Tuesday’s 9-7 loss to the Mets at Wrigley Field.

Cade Horton left after 29 pitches with back tightness and will be monitored the rest of the week before the wild-card series starts.

The Cubs clubhouse was silent afterward. The players know what’s at stake — a loud and raucous atmosphere at Wrigley to start the postseason if they clinch home-field advantage. The alternative is a trip out west, probably to San Diego, where they would be decided underdogs.

Second baseman Nico Hoerner acknowledged Tuesdays’ loss “stings” but didn’t seem worried the Cubs would let it linger. Hoerner said manager Craig Counsell was “adamant” when stressing the importance of reaching their next goal during his celebration speech on clinching night.

“Obviously we haven’t played well since we clinched,” Hoerner added. “But playing here at Wrigley, playoff games is a really, really special thing and not an opportunity any of us want to miss.”

Matt Shaw’s media session in response to his leaving the team to attend the memorial of his friend, conservative activist Charlie Kirk, went about as well as you would expect.

Speaking for the first time about his friendship with Kirk and the reason for leaving, Shaw said he was invited by Kirk’s wife, Erika, and felt he needed to be there. He ignored Kirk’s controversial politics and stressed their shared faith. Shaw also said he understood some fans would be disappointed with the decision.

“It’s only natural for people you disagree with,” he said. “That’s OK. Any way I can support them, love them, I’m going to do that.”

Many applauded the move, and others vilified the Cubs rookie. There was little in-between, fitting the modern culture of American divisiveness. You were either pro-Shaw or anti-Shaw.

Mets broadcaster Gary Cohen chimed in during the SNY broadcast of Tuesday’s game, saying: “I don’t want to talk about any of the politics of it, but the thought of leaving your team in the middle of a race for any reason other than a family emergency really strikes me as weird.”

But Shaw has the support of his teammates and doesn’t use social media, so perhaps he can shut out the noise created by his request to leave, which Cubs President Jed Hoyer granted.

The Cubs could’ve made it a little easier on Shaw had Counsell acknowledged before Sunday’s game that his starting third baseman had left instead of waiting for the inevitable postgame questions about why he wasn’t available. It made it look as if Shaw was hiding from attending Kirk’s memorial instead of “blessed” to attend, as he said.

No one wants to use the term “choke,” but it’s a part of sports that never will go away.

It’s easy to throw around but hard to define. Tony Phillips once said the California Angels team he played on in 1995 “choked like hell — our butts got so tight” during a late-season collapse that saw them blow an 11-game division lead.

The 1978 Boston Red Sox are considered one of the great collapses in baseball history, leading the New York Yankees by 14 games in late July only to lose in a Game 163 tiebreaker — the “Bucky Dent Game.” What some forget is the Red Sox also won their final eight games to get into the tiebreaker after blowing the big lead.

Not all chokes are alike.

But as the pressure builds, we find out which players can handle it and which ones will fold. No matter your salary or experience, everyone is subject to the same intense scrutiny at this time of year.

If the Mets had lost Tuesday, would second baseman Jeff McNeil, who made two horrible throwing errors in the fourth inning, be labeled a goat? It took only a couple of missed fly-balls for obscure outfielder Don Young to be immortalized on the 1969 Cubs team that collapsed to the Mets.

That’s one of the great things about baseball. The pursuit of heroic deeds can end in catastrophe if you’re not up to task at one particular moment. It’s why those Nike commercials on great athletes risking failure resonate so much. We love watching the struggle.

All the late-season drama reminded me of a conversation in early June with Tigers ace Tarik Skubal, who was arguing against the proliferation of rebuilds as a front-office strategy, having gone through one in Detroit.

“I don’t ever want to be on a losing team,” Skubal said. “Losing is the worst thing, almost, in the world. I think losing sucks more than winning is awesome. I’m not a big fan of losing games. It’s not good for the players. It’s not good for the fans, losing like that all the time.”

Amazingly, Skubal’s Tigers once held a 15 1/2 game lead over the Cleveland Guardians in the American League Central but watched it completely disappear by Tuesday night, when Skubal lost the opener of their three-game series at Progressive Field. It was the Tigers’ seventh straight loss and 11th in 12 games.

“A lot of things are piling up on us, obviously,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said afterward. “We’re having to wear it because this is our reality.”

Reality bites sometimes, and it’s going to be fun to see who gets bitten.

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