The key at-bat from Game 1 of the World Series

CLEVELAND – There’s this moment, man, when it’s just gone. Too much inertia, not enough resistance. Not enough gravity. Not enough hit the brakes, throw the ‘chute, spray the foam, get it back, so it’s just gone.

Fire the brain. Fire the muscles, all of them. Fire the intent. Fire the will. By then, by the time that fastball-masquerading blur becomes a slider, undoubtedly a slider, oh no a slider, and everything from the ground up has been fired, and that big ol’ bearded reedy guy has spun the baseball, dug those stitches into the air, inevitability follows. That bat is going to be swung, like it or not.

The Chicago Cubs maybe had Andrew Miller, too, long before they’d lose Tuesday night’s Game 1, 6-0. They had runners on base and a manageable deficit. They had him at his most imprecise. They pushed him past 30 pitches, past 40, coming up on 50. They were smart. They were aggressive. They left him alone in his imprecision, or tried, because maybe it would last and maybe it wouldn’t. They’d surrounded him on the basepaths, let him no room for fatigue or miscalculation.

And then he was still Andrew Miller, 96 miles per hour over the top of the strike zone, 84 and vanishing under it, and in a game the Cubs could still win in the seventh inning — they had three men on base with none out, then one out, then two out, then a 3-and-2 count to David Ross. They’d stood right on the verge of knocking the Cleveland Indians’ most potent weapon to his heels, sending Game 1 of the World Series into yet another critical at-bat, into more pitches, more opportunities.

This was the moment. The people at Progressive Field leaned a little closer. Miller nodded at his catcher, Roberto Perez, confirming the slider. Ross in his head ran quickly through the at-bat, five pitches that had to lead to the sixth, that maybe would show a pattern but probably wouldn’t, and in the end led back to what it always did – hunt the fastball, survive the slider.

The first-pitch fastball, all 95 mph of it, for a ball. The slider he swung through. Another fastball, a tick faster than the first. A slider in, a nasty one he picked up early and watched for ball three. He was ahead, 3-and-1. The Cubs trailed 3-0. Willson Contreras had popped up with the bases loaded and none out and Addison Russell had struck out on three pitches. That left Ross, the man they call Grandpa Rossy, who’s seen it all twice by now, who will walk away from the game next week no matter what comes, who before he does would wriggle his way into a hitter’s count against the great Miller and maybe help win a World Series game.

Miller had fooled him early in the count, on that 1-and-0 pitch, the one Ross figured would have to be a fastball. He wouldn’t want to fall behind 2-and-0, Ross thought, and it’s not like that fastball is particularly vulnerable anyway, so Ross got everything moving a little early, only to get the slider for strike one. That pitch still had Ross’ attention by the fifth pitch, the 3-and-1 pitch. Maybe another slider, he thought. Well, and here’s the thing about tracking what is maybe the best pitch of October, that being Miller’s slider, it almost has to start outside the zone to be a strike when it got there. Middle of the plate out of his hand? That’s a ball.

The 3-and-1 pitch was a slider. Ross saw the spin early. But it was middle-in, the one that would veer toward him, toward his back foot, the one Miller wanted him to swing at because it’s unhittable. So he did not swing.

An hour later, Ross smiled.

“It kinda backed up a bit,” he said.

The slider spun but did not bite and was, instead, strike two. The fans cheered. Maybe Miller was going to get out of it. Of course he was. He’s Andrew Miller. So the few who were not already on their feet stood to recognize the moment, that two strikes for Miller very often becomes three. He had struck out 22 of 45 batters in October to that point, an absurd ratio, and now he had the Cubs’ No. 9 hitter on those same ropes.

Truth is, that average slider, the one that fell into the strike zone, gave Ross a third option to consider as he mulled the last pitch he’d see. There was the fastball. There was the great slider nobody can hit. There was the soft slider, perhaps overthrown and unlikely to be overthrown again, but still possible.

The Cubs would have five at-bats against Miller over two innings that could have ended in a tied score. This was the third. It would conclude with the 21st of Miller’s 46 pitches, with the sort of drama befitting teams that hadn’t been on the stage for a while, that hadn’t walked off the stage winners in almost forever.

Miller, 3-and-2 on David Ross, the possible tying run on first base, threw this slider. The good one. Maybe his best one. The back-footer, middle-in at the start to Ross’ eye, and he’d really, honestly, first had to guard against that fastball. Because you look slider and, as Ross said, “Then he throws one right down the middle and America hates me.”

Three Cubs left their bases. Indians fans clapped and screamed and hoped for it all to end. And Ross fired it all. The brain, the heart, every muscle.

“It’s just too late,” he said. “You’re trying to see the ball out of spots. He’s got that funky angle, slinging it, like Bumgarner almost. I mean, he’d painted two fastballs just down, 96 miles an hour. Three-and-one, he messed me up.”

He’d started the swing, though, and believed in it for a fraction of a second too long, and tried with everything he had to stop.

“I went to go,” he said, “and it just disappeared.”

A check swing gone too far. Strike three. Miller punched his glove in celebration, caught his catcher’s eye and shrugged, as if to say, “Well, that was interesting,” and then almost managed a smile. The game ended 6-0, which would sound like an at-bat in the seventh inning, an out in the seventh inning, could be rolled in with any of the other 27. But it wasn’t. It was better. It was more interesting.

“Pick our heads up,” Ross later said. “Come back tomorrow.”

The series goes on, no stopping it either.