It’s a wild finish, and for two teams it’s not over yet

Jake Peavy and Matt Holliday, the national stage is yours.

Hold the curtain. The regular season extends to today, after a final Sunday that opened with the delicious possibility of four teams tying for two playoff spots and closed with delirium in Philadelphia, despair in New York and two teams set for sudden death.

This is the wildest of wild-card finishes: The San Diego Padres and Colorado Rockies play this afternoon in Denver, in the first one-game playoff in eight years. The winner travels to Philadelphia, where the Phillies clinched their first playoff berth in 14 years Sunday.

The Phillies celebrated their National League East championship at the expense of the Mets, a team that capped perhaps the greatest collapse in baseball history with one of the greatest one-inning meltdowns in baseball history.

Never before had a major league team blown a seven-game lead with 17 games left, a collapse arguably rivaled only by the 1964 Phillies, who coughed up a 6 1/2 -game lead with 12 to play.

The Mets had lost 11 of 16 entering the final day, but they still were tied with these Phillies. In the first inning Sunday -- at home, against the last-place Florida Marlins, with 303-game winner Tom Glavine on the mound -- the Mets flailed their way into winter.

Glavine delivered the second-shortest start of his 21-year career. He got one out. He gave up seven runs on five hits, two walks and a throwing error, and on his final pitch he forced home a run by hitting the opposing pitcher with the bases loaded.

In the bottom of the inning, the Mets lost slugger Carlos Delgado, his left hand broken when he was hit by a pitch.

The Mets were down, 7-0, en route to an 8-1 defeat. That put the spotlight on Philadelphia, and on Jamie Moyer, who was born in 1962 -- same as the Mets franchise.

Moyer grew up outside Philadelphia, skipping school to join the Phillies’ 1980 World Series championship parade. He kept hope alive for a 2007 encore by holding the Washington Nationals without an earned run over 5 1/3 innings. With defending NL MVP Ryan Howard hitting a home run and driving in three runs, the Phillies rolled to a 6-1 victory.

That left the Padres and Rockies to play for the wild card. And, by the time the Phillies were spraying champagne, the Padres were well on their way to defeat, watching the scoreboard for updates from Denver.

Trevor Hoffman, baseball’s all-time save leader, had blown the save Saturday, forcing Manager Bud Black to decide whether to deploy Peavy, his ace, in Milwaukee on Sunday. Black opted to save Peavy for a possible one-game playoff and take his chances with Brett Tomko, cut by the Dodgers five weeks ago.

The Padres handed Tomko a 4-2 lead heading into the bottom of the fifth. He did not survive the inning, at one point throwing consecutive wild pitches as the tying run advanced from first base to third. The Brewers scored four times in the fifth inning, three more in the sixth and rolled to an 11-6 victory.

That left all eyes on Coors Field, where -- get this -- a pitchers’ duel was in progress. The dueling pitchers, neither taken in your fantasy league: Ubaldo Jimenez for the Rockies, Yusmiero Petit for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Petit threw five shutout innings. Jimenez carried a no-hitter into the sixth inning, striking out 10. Colorado scored once in the sixth. Arizona scored once in the seventh.

Colorado scored three times in the eighth, once on a single by Garrett Atkins, twice more on a double by Brad Hawpe. Arizona scored twice in the ninth, but the Diamondbacks left the tying run on base. The Rockies exhaled and won, 4-3.

In Milwaukee, the Padres shuffled out of the visiting clubhouse and onto the team plane, directing the pilot to Denver rather than Philadelphia. In New York, Glavine said he had not decided whether to retire, leaving open the possibility he could go out on a rancid note, and General Manager Omar Minaya refused to say whether Manager Willie Randolph would return next season.

There was a lovely sighting in Houston, where the retiring Craig Biggio earned a long ovation after leaving the field for the final time, in the only major league uniform he had worn.

There was an odd sighting in Pittsburgh, where the St. Louis Cardinals used former Angels closer Troy Percival as their starting pitcher. Percival, who worked one inning, had made 638 career appearances, a major league record for a pitcher making his first start.

Percival announced his retirement in April, throwing out a ceremonial last pitch in an Angels uniform, then changed his mind and joined the Cardinals in June. He held opponents to a .170 batting average and had a 1.80 earned-run average, better than any of the Angels relievers.

Yet the Cardinals, the defending World Series champions, are done. The Angels open the playoffs Wednesday against the Boston Red Sox, the same day the Diamondbacks start their series against the Chicago Cubs. The Cleveland Indians and New York Yankees begin their series Thursday.

And the Phillies play Wednesday, against a team to be determined this afternoon. The Rockies start Josh Fogg, who has not lost since Aug. 22. They also start with momentum, as winners of 13 of their last 14 games, and with Holliday, their MVP candidate, who homered in 11 of those games.

The Padres start with Peavy, the presumptive Cy Young winner, the NL leader in victories, earned-run average and strikeouts. It’s the only game today, so TV dictated game time would be prime time on the East Coast. That’s 4:30 in Los Angeles -- and 5:30 in Denver. Peavy, throwing smoke in the twilight, brought to you by TBS.

--

bill.shaikin@latimes.com