5 for fighting: Contenders face off tonight

Welcome to the best time of the year. When the pressure and tension are cranked up. When seven months of hard work could be lost in an instant. These next five weeks are going to have the look and feel of postseason baseball, at least in terms of adrenaline and competitive fire.

The pennant chase kicks into high gear tonight when five series begin featuring 10 teams in the thick of the playoff race — Yankees-Royals, Blue Jays-Orioles, Pirates-Cubs, Marlins-Mets, Mariners-Rangers — but we’ve already seen the game’s best reach a new level, with the defending World Series champion Royals pummeling the Red Sox on Sunday Night Baseball to win another high-impact series.

MLB divisonal and Wild Card standings

Kansas City erupted for eight runs in the sixth inning to surge past Boston, 10-4, making it 17 wins in its past 21 games, a scorching stretch that coincided with the arrival of the Rally Mantis.

The Royals now head home to play the surprising Yankees, one of the five key series beginning tonight.

There’s also the AL East matchup between the Blue Jays and Orioles. Both teams tuned up with their respective superstars, Josh Donaldson and Manny Machado, taking our collective breath away with Sunday performances that are hopefully a precursor for the series.

Donaldson put the Blue Jays on his back and refused to let them lose. These are moments that separate some players from others.

He homered in the bottom of the third inning to give his team a 2-1 lead over the Twins. He homered again in the seventh with a teammate on base to turn a 5-4 deficit into a 6-5 lead.

And he hammered his third of the day in the eighth inning, supplying what turned out to be the deciding run as the Blue Jays won, 9-6, to remain alone atop the American League East.

“It doesn’t get any better than that,” Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said of the three homers.

Machado, Baltimore’s dazzling third baseman, had some of that same magic working in the bottom of the seventh inning at Yankee Stadium when he lunged to his right, got to his knees and threw across the diamond to get Ronald Torreyes.

It was one of the breathtaking plays Machado has made so often, and it helped the Orioles beat the Yankees, 5-0. The Orioles needed it, too, having lost three in a row to slip three games behind Toronto in the AL East.

Donaldson and Machado provided the perfect backdrop for the start of a three-game series between their teams Monday night at Camden Yards. The Blue Jays have some wiggle room, the Orioles very little.

There’ll be similar pressures at Citi Field for the Marlins and Mets as well as in Chicago, Texas and Kansas City.

As Marlins manager Don …

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