by John Walters

Starting Five

It Was Miller Time

When the gamble pays off, you’re a genius (Terry Francona), and when it does not, you’re a dope (Buck Showalter). The Tribe led 4-3 with two outs in the top of the fifth inning in Game 1 in Cleveburg last night. With no Red Sox on base, Francona brings in his closer, 6’7″ lefty Andrew Miller.

The southpaw allows a double and a walk, but then he strikes out David Ortiz to end the inning. He pitches a flawless sixth and gets two outs in the seventh before being lifted. Six outs, 40 pitches, four strikeouts, one hit, no runs.

The Indians go on to win, 5-4. Riskier move than Buck’s decision to save Zach Britton so long that he never actually used him? Your call. But the Indians won.

By the way, that Ortiz double in the top of the eighth? That’s what makes him Big Papi. I don’t know anyone who can hit a ball that hard, that screams to the warning track without ever seeming to get higher than 12 feet off the ground.

2. West World Better Than Watters’ World*

*The judges will also accept, ‘Ricky Watters Better Than Jesse Watters”

If you’ve never seen a Jesse Watters field report on FOX News (he’s Bill O’Reilly’s answer to a Daily Show field correspondent), the Chinatown piece might surprise you. If you have, you’d know this is not out of the norm for him. He did a similarly smug report from Harlem last summer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZcsAmDJigo

As this Daily Show rebuttal from correspondent Ronnie Chang illustrates, the Watters piece referenced karata (Japanese), Tae Kwan Do (Korean) and Mr. Miyagi (again, Japanese) in its “humorous” sendup of “CHI-na.”

3. Rock Me Like A*

*The judges will also accept “Water’s World >> Watters’ World”

Having ravaged Haiti, Cuba and the Bahamas, Matthew is now making its way up the Florida coast as a Category 3 storm. The difference is that the eye of the hurricane is now offshore.

The LSU-Florida game in Gainesville has been postponed due to the storm, while the Georgia-South Carolina game has been moved to Sunday (watch as ESPN realizes this game will draw eyeballs and begins scheduling one Sunday afternoon college game each week next season). Anyway, the Florida-LSU game becomes problematic if either school is in the hunt for an SEC division title at the end of November. The two schools do not have  a common open date going forward and the SEC title game is scheduled for the Saturday after the regular season ends.

It would make sense to just let them play that December weekend and move the SEC Championship Game back one week, if their game has conference title implications, no?

4. “A Person To Be Shunned”

Off the air for nearly 18 months now, David Letterman’s voice and thoughts have been sorely absent from this presidential campaign. But he recently gave an interview and was willing to discuss the GOP candidate. Letterman, who took down Trump years ago with Donald seated right next to him, exposing him for having his Macy’s ties manufactured in China as Trump pretended not to know where they were made, calls Trump “a person to be shunned” as well as “a damaged human being.”

I’ll let you read the rest, but it’s short and to the point and on-target. Letterman, on how Trump’s outrageous and often ugly comments only made him more popular because the media couldn’t stop talking about them: “Kids, if you turn off the light, the moths will stop coming.”

5. Toronto’s Most Wanted

Last night Ken Pagan, 41, turned himself into Toronto police, but Pagan, a journalist, isn’t saying that he was the infamous 7th-inning beer tosser from the A.L. wildcard game. Evidence may exonerate him, as Pagan was seen drinking beer from a cup immediately after the can was hurled onto the field. Still, maybe he’s simply that crafty. Stay tuned. Will the mystery LaBatt’s tosser strike again in Game 3 of the ALDS?

Music 101

Trapped

Is this the best cover that The Boss ever performed? How many others are there? Bruce Springsteen took this obscure Jimmy Cliff tune from the Seventies and made it a staple of his shows on the “The River” tour. Then Bruce’s live version of the song by the reggae artist made its way onto the We Are The World album in 1985 and that was that.

Remote Patrol

Baseball Orgy!!!!!!

Blue Jays at Rangers 1 p..m. TBS

Red Sox at Indians 4 p.m. TBS

Dodgers at Nationals 5:30 p.m. FS1

Giants at Cubs 9 p.m. FS1

What an insanely talented cadre of dudes taking the hill today: Yu Darvish, David Price, Corey Kluber, Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer, Johnny Cueto and Jon Lester. Yes, I left off J.A. Happ, who is happ-less compared to this group.