:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/51516611/usa-today-9630158.0.jpg)
Six months of baseball playing and we’re down to this: the Chicago Cubs visit the Cleveland Indians to kick off the 2016 Fall Classic. It’s been quite a year in Believeland; just a few months ago the city was awarded its first professional sports championship seemingly in forever when the Warrors blew a 3-1 lead in the NBA Finals. Somewhat fittingly, the Cavs will kick off their season tonight at the Q, so all eyes in the sporting world will be on Cleveland tonight.
That’s such a weird thing to type.
For the Cubs, you might’ve heard that they are in the World Series for the first time in seemingly forever. Did you know that [insert popular thing here] wasn’t invented/didn’t exist the last time the Cubs reached the World Series? Crazy, right?
Little known factoid of the night: The Cubs haven’t won a World Series since 1908. Nineteen oh-eight!
Anyway, fresh of his winning the co-MVP of the National League Championship Series, Jon Lester will take the mound for the Cubs. Lester is parlaying his second best season (at worst) into the best postseason of his life. His minuscule 0.86 ERA this October is even smaller than his brilliant postseason run with the Boston Red Sox in 2013. In that season, he started game one of the World Series and pitched 7.2 innings of 5 hit, no run ball. The Cubs would certainly welcome a repeat performance.
On the other side, former Cy Young Award winner Corey Kluber is no slouch himself, having allowed only 2 earned runs over 11.1 innings of work. He’ll certainly have his work cut out for him tonight, taking on a squad that ranked third in all of baseball in runs scored and OPS+... and that was before they had the services of a certain young, left handed, power bat.
Join us here at Red Reporter for all the baseball happenins and other non-baseball (usually food) takes throughout the evening.