If history is any indication, baseball fans could be in for quite the treat tonight when the Blue Jays and Royals take the field for Game 6 of the American League Championship Series.

After a hard-fought National League Division Series with the Los Angeles Dodgers, the New York Mets used their young starting pitching to sweep the Chicago Cubs in the NL Championship Series and advance to the World Series. The Mets haven’t been to the World Series since 2000, and they haven’t been World Series champions since 1986.

Game 6 is an elimination game for the Blue Jays as they square off with the Royals in the American League Championship Series on Friday. Here are four ingredients the Royals will need to end this series at Kauffman Stadium on Friday.

Every time it seems like the season is about to come to an end, Toronto finds a way to pick itself off the ground. The task still won’t be easy, but here are four key ingredients to the Blue Jays defying the odds once again and continuing their postseason run beyond Friday’s Game 6.

The 2015 Toronto Blue Jays have heard a lot about the 1985 Kansas City Royals in the last few days, and they hope the comparisons become more relevant this weekend.

This year, the expectations among the locals were there from the start. When the Royals ran away from the rest of the AL Central in the second half of the season the epidemic spread, much like it did decades earlier when the Royals made more postseason appearances than any other big league team from 1976-85.

The Mets have done their part. After winning the National League East and battling past the Dodgers in the NL Division Series, they swept aside the Cubs in the NL Championship Series. Now, all they can do is wait — and watch.

Some years back, Ben Zobrist spoke at a banquet for his college, a little-known baseball factory called Dallas Baptist University. And in the crowd that night was Ryan Goins, at that point a collegiate athlete aspiring to become what Zobrist already was.

Less than 24 hours after watching the Mets clinch the National League pennant at Wrigley Field, Cubs president of baseball operations Theo Epstein couldn’t wait for Opening Day 2016 and another chance at playing baseball in October.

Yordano Ventura will be back on the mound against the Blue Jays on Friday, looking to secure his club an ALCS-clinching victory in Game 6 at Kauffman Stadium.

The cheering had grown loud enough, the chanting overwhelming, so David Wright obliged. He jogged over to where the netting ends behind home plate at Wrigley Field, high-fiving the hundreds of Mets fans who refused to leave. Then he hopped over a railing leading to the top step of the dugout, shaking the hands of more fans there. Game 4 of the National League Championship Series had just ended. The Mets were heading to the World Series.

The Blue Jays are known for hitting home runs, but it’s their plate discipline that could be the biggest key to any success in the remainder of the American League Championship Series.

David Price wanted to make sure he did not send any mixed signals on Thursday. Both through social media and in a news conference at Kauffman Stadium, the ace of the Blue Jays’ rotation made it clear that he has taken no issue with how Toronto has handled him this month.

The American League Championship Series has become a grueling test of Jose Bautista’s patience. The Blue Jays’ No. 3 hitter badly wants to do damage in run-scoring opportunities, but the Royals aren’t giving him all that much to hit. And so Bautista is constantly fighting himself, toeing the line between taking what’s given and expanding his zone to make something happen.

Mets general manager Sandy Alderson sat alone in Wrigley Field on Wednesday night. The team he spent the past five years constructing had just beaten the Cubs, 8-3, to sweep the National League Championship Series and advance to the World Series.

While no Mets fan would complain about securing a spot in the Fall Classic for the first time in 15 years, the Mets so thoroughly dispatched the Cubs that they’re set up for a five-day layoff before the World Series begins on Tuesday night.

Jonathan Mayo answers questions about the Cardinals’ top prospect Alex Reyes, the development of Lewis Brinson and more in this week’s Pipeline Inbox.