Surprise! Tonight's World Series game is starting one hour earlier. If you ask me, all postseason games should aim to be getting underway at 7pm Eastern, but that's my East Coast bias showing. People do apparently exist in other time zones and giving them time to get off work and get home from work to watch the postseason is not a bad thing to do.
For tonight, the game time was moved up because there is threat of some bad weather later in the evening in Cleveland, or so they said yesterday. Who knows whether that will materialize during the game time or not.
Cleveland put a big dent in the national media party for the Cubs with a win in Game 1 of the series last night. Can they wreck that party for a second night in a row? I guess that depends on how well starting pitcher Trevor Bauer does, as well as how available the superhuman Andrew Miller might be after throwing the most pitches in relief he's ever thrown in his career last night.
Old friend Jake Arrieta pitches for the Cubs tonight. Arrieta won the Cy Young last year, you've probably heard, with an otherworldly season. Arrieta was on the way to a second straight otherworldly season until late June when he started to stink. In 16 starts from June 27 onwards, Arrieta had a 4.44 ERA - and that's in the NL, facing those lineups! That's not very good, Jake. And he wasn't very good in the NLCS either.
Almost-friend Dexter Fowler remains in the Cubs leadoff spot. I might still be a little bitter about it.