After a weekend of playoff baseball action here’s the state of the Division Series in both leagues.

American League Division Series (best of five games)
Detroit and New York are tied 1-1.
Texas and Tampa Bay are tied 1-1.

National League Division Series (best of five games)
St. Louis and Philadelphia are tied 1-1.
Milwaukee leads Arizona 2-0.

With three series are now tied at a game apiece, drama fans would be quietly confident of at least one of those going to a crucial game five. The immediate highlight is the Sabathia vs. Verlander matchup on Monday night, now taking place in Detroit instead of Yankee Stadium after Friday’s rainout.

The notable thing about the playoffs thus far is that Milwaukee are rolling some proverbial beer kegs over Arizona, up two games to zip and their lineup looking downright formidable. With the top three of their rotation (Gallardo, Marcum and Greinke) the best of any playoff opponent apart from the historically-good Phillies threesome, along with an ace closer in John Axford, at this point the Brewers are certainly worth a cheeky bet for the World Series in what is Prince Fielder’s last contracted year with the team.

Bonus: ESPN America are showing the excellent documentary “Catching Hell” (http://tv.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/arts/television/catching-hell-from-alex-gibney-review.html) at 7pm on Sunday evening. The film, directed by Alex Gibney, revisits the infamous Bartman Game from Wrigley Field in the 2003 NLCS.

To the uninitiated, the Chicago Cubs were ahead in the series vs. the Florida Marlins and seemingly just five outs away from the World Series. A long, harmless-looking fly ball was hit down the third base line; the crowd went for the ball, as did Cubs left fielder Felipe Alou, and one fan in particular stopped Alou from making the (what would have been spectacular) catch. The fan? 26-year-old lifelong Cubs fan Steve Bartman; for him, a life-changing moment and the subject of this two hour film. Cue a Cubbie collapse where the score turned from a comfortable 3-0 lead to an 8-3 deficit and a feeling of impending, inevitible doom. The Cubs duly lost the game and the subsequent game 7 in Florida to ensure that the Cubs would be no threat to win their first World Series since 1908.

The documentary provides some fantastic videoanalysis of the incident, interviews with people who were seated around Steve Bartman on the night, review of the crowd’s (over)reaction and some remarkable and frankly frightening never-seen-before footage from inside the ballpark at the time. To go along with this Gibney also goes back to the treatment of Bill Buckner in Boston after his botched play of the 1986 World Series as well as taking an interesting look at the idea and background of “scapegoat” in the first place. It’s well worth a look, especially if you were one of those sitting watching that game in the wee hours of the morning eight years ago while all hell was breaking loose in Chicago.

TV schedule for the week

N.B. All games are on ESPN America unless specified otherwise. Pitching matchups are included where available. Note the shifting game times depending on how many games end up being played in each series. Simple, eh?

Monday 10pm: Texas @ Tampa Bay (Game 3)
Lewis v. Price

1:30am: New York Yankees @ Detroit (Game 3)
Sabathia vs. Verlander

Tuesday 7pm: Texas @ Tampa Bay (Game 4)
Harrison vs. Hellickson

10pm: Philadelphia @ St. Louis (Game 3)
Hamels vs. Garcia

1:30am: NY Yankees @ Detroit (Game 4)
Burnett vs. Porcello

Wednesday 11pm: Philadelphia @ St. Louis (Game 4)
N.B. shifts to 1am if there is no game 4 necessary in the Milwaukee/Arizona series

2.30am: Milwaukee @ Arizona (Game 4 – if necessary)

Thursday 10pm: Tampa Bay @ Texas (Game 5 – if necessary)
N.B. shifts to 1am if this is the only game of the night

1:30am: Detroit @ NY Yankees (Game 5 – if necessary)
N.B. shifts to 1am if this is the only game of the night

Friday 10pm: Arizona @ Milwaukee (Game 5 – if necessary)
N.B. shifts to 1am if this is the only game of the night

1:30am: St. Louis @ Philadelphia (Game 5 – if necessary)
N.B. shifts to 1am if this is the only game of the night

Saturday 12:30am: ALCS Game 1

Sunday (bonus) 7pm: ESPN Films “Catching Hell”

9pm: ALCS Game 2 / NLCS Game 1

1am: ALCS Game 2 / NLCS Game 1