By JOHN JAMES MARSHALL/Designated Writers

At this time of year, there are two kinds of people in this (sports) world — (1) those whose team are in a pennant race and (2) everybody else.

I count myself fortunate to be in the first category. As an Atlanta Braves fan, every game is like Game 7 of the World Series. I’ll remind you that it’s early August and the Braves have a semi-comfortable lead in the National League East, but that makes no difference.

The Braves are in the midst of a three-game series with another first-place team (Minnesota, AL Central) and I’m grinding every pitch. There’s nothing like the final two months of the year when your team is in the race. This year, there really aren’t that many good races, but until the magic number goes to zero, you learn not to count any chickens but the actual hatching. (see: 1978 Red Sox).

You check the standings every morning and then look at scores four or five times a night. Are the Phillies about to rally? Are the Mets going to win every game? Somebody needs to beat the Nationals! 

But what it makes you appreciate are all those years in which you fall into category (2) and your team can’t get a sniff of the post-season. No matter how big of a fan you are, you just lose interest come early August. You might check a boxscore every now and then, but mentally, you’ve packed it in.

Now with the extra wild card spot into the playoffs — which I wasn’t all that wild about at first but now I love — it has kept even more teams alive than ever before. Maybe not the Marlins and Tigers, who were out of it in April, but if your team gets hot for two weeks, you never know.

Football and basketball don’t have pennant races. This is the exclusive property of baseball and there’s nothing to compare it to. You can be cruising along and one bad homestand can change everything.

The first 100 or so games of a 162-game season are all great and fun and all that. But when you have a team in the hunt, there’s nothing like that final third. Did the Phillies just score again?