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TORONTO -- A most unlikely pitching performance helped put a most unexpected team into the World Series.Cleveland rookie Ryan Merritt came out of nowhere and coolly delivered a lead to the Andrew Miller-led bullpen, and the Indians won their first pennant since 1997 by blanking Toronto 3-0 Wednesday in Game 5 of the AL Championship Series.Cleveland, which has never hosted a World Series opener, will play Game 1 at Progressive Field on Tuesday night against the Chicago Cubs or Los Angeles Dodgers.Manager Terry Franconas team will try to augment whats already been a scintillating year in Cleveland after LeBron James and the Cavaliers earned the citys first major pro sports championship since 1964. The Indians title drought dates to 1948.We always said if we could do it with this group it would be so special because this is as close to a family feel as you can get in a professional setting. So for that part of it, it is beyond feeling good, Francona said.The Dodgers led the Cubs 2-1 going into Game 4 of the NLCS on Wednesday night. Cleveland didnt play either club this season.Miller, acquired from the New York Yankees in a midseason trade, was selected the ALCS MVP as the Indians took their sixth pennant.I feel like Ive said the word `special a million times in the last 20 or 30 minutes. But its the truth. Its a blast to be a part of, Miller said.With all of 11 major league innings under his belt -- and only one start, on Sept. 30 -- Merritt took the mound and looked just like a seasoned vet. The 24-year-old lefty retired the first 10 batters and allowed a mere two hits before being pulled after 4 1/3 innings.I know they were counting on me, Merritt said. Before the game, they came and told me they had my back, everybody had my back, good or bad. So that takes some pressure off, and I just went out there and pitched and trusted my team.Merritt got taps on his heart and hat from teammates when he left the mound. Then it was up to Clevelands tireless relievers to hold a three-run lead against the wild-card Blue Jays.Miller again did most of the heavy lifting, going 2 2/3 innings before Cody Allen worked the ninth for a save. Winning pitcher Bryan Shaw tossed an inning before Miller came in.Carlos Santana and Coco Crisp homered for the Indians.With starting pitchers Carlos Carrasco, Danny Salazar and Trevor Bauer dealing with injuries, the Indians kept defying the odds.Cleveland overtook defending World Series champion Kansas City and topped a $196 million Detroit team to win the AL Central, then put an abrupt end to Big Papis career, sweeping David Ortiz and the Boston Red Sox in the Division Series.The Indians stayed on a roll in the ALCS, shutting down the banging Blue Jays. Cleveland won despite hitting .168 in the series, with slick-fielding shortstop Francisco Lindor leading the way in going 7 for 19.Toronto lost in the ALCS for the second straight year.Im sure there will be some disappointments and grumbling and complaining about how you fell short again, but thats not coming from me, manager John Gibbons said. Because I know what these guys did, and I think its a pretty good accomplishment. The key is we want to take that next step one of these days. Hopefully, its next year.Merritt -- a Texas native drafted in the 16th round by Cleveland in 2011 -- hadnt pitched in a game since his late September start, although hed gotten some work in this month in the instructional league at the Indians spring training complex in Arizona.A day after Toronto averted a sweep, the crowd at the roaring Rogers Centre expected the Blue Jays to roll over the rookie.Maybe the Blue Jays did, too.With our experience in our lineup, Im pretty sure hes going to be shaking in his boots more than we are, Toronto slugger Jose Bautista said after Game 4.After the Blue Jays were eliminated, Bautista took a different tone.He seemed to make the right pitches at the right time, Bautista said. Hats off to him.Merritt struck out three batters in the first two innings -- all looking -- and didnt allow a baserunner until Josh Donaldsons one-out single in the fourth. After Russell Martins bloop single with one out in the fifth, Francona leaned again on a bullpen that soaked up 8 1/3 innings in a Game 3 win Monday.Shaw pitched an inning, and Miller came on with one out in the sixth and a runner on. Donaldson bounced into a double play on Millers first pitch, and the tall lefty made it through the seventh and eighth with little trouble before giving way to Allen.Cleveland took a 1-0 lead in the first when Mike Napoli doubled and left fielder Ezequiel Carrera misplayed the ball off the wall for an error. Lindor scored from first on the play.Santana and Crisp added solo shots in the third and fourth off Toronto starter Marco Estrada to put the AL Central champions up 3-0.TRAINERS ROOMIndians: Francona said before the game that Bauer was supposed to have his lacerated right pinkie looked by a doctor again. The idea was to see if the right-hander could potentially pitch out of the bullpen at all during this series after being lifted when he was bleeding in the first inning of Game 3.Now the question is whether Bauer can be of any help in the World Series.Obviously, he needs to heal, but he cant just not throw, Francona said.Bauer sliced his pinkie last week repairing one of the drones he enjoys flying as a hobby. During the boozy clubhouse celebration after Game 5, Bauer had his right arm wrapped in protective plastic.UP NEXTIndians: Cleveland returns home and rests up for the World Series.Blue Jays: Toronto faces an uncertain offseason after making the postseason as a wild card. Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion and Michael Saunders are in the final year of their contracts. 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Mickelson barely made the cut but had the best round of the day with nine birdies and an eagle coupled with two bogeys to sit two shots behind leader Craig Lee of Scotland. Lee shot a 69 for a 12-under 204 total. "I just love the fact I am in contention and have an opportunity in my first tournament of the year here in Abu Dhabi," Mickelson said. One look at him tells you that he is both an athlete and an orderly man. His kit, of whatever hue, is usually pristine and there is a sense of precision and economy to everything he says and everything he does. Nothing is wasted. He moves with the same grace noticeable in most of the best cricketers. Moreover, he looks like a player, his eyes have that same narrowed stare that Steve Waughs did, and all of the playing and training and discipline are obvious in the hard planes of his face. It adds up to something, a sense of substance, an authority that separates him from his team, gives just the amount of distance that leaders need.Cricket moves fast these days, and the days run away. Pictures of Eoin Morgan at his early photocalls are of a wider-eyed, softer-faced kid, not yet toughened by real failure or defeat, and so far unstopped. His first-class debut had come not for a county side but for Ireland against Scotland in Dublin, where in his maiden innings he made a three-ball duck. He was already an outsider, and already talked about, a batsman who seemed innately tuned in to the new information beginning to thrum through the game, a player with a technique of hitting late with an almost audible hiss of bat speed, especially when he whipped the ball, reverse-style, backwards of square.Here began the myth, the notion that some of this weird invention came from a life of hurling, a colloquial Irish sport. It offered him the kind of otherness that brings originality to an ancient but changing game. And this was 2004: in terms of getting funky, he was George Clinton, an originator of the form. Yet like the flamingo and the switch hit soon coined by his sometime soulmate and another of Englands great outsiders Kevin Pietersen, there were hours of thought and practice put into their conception: Morgan was obsessed with cricket.Across a career that qualifies effortlessly as a modern enigma - periods of incandescent run-making in big matches under heavy pressure cut through with fathomless dry spells as long as a desert summer - he hinted at significance if not quite greatness. Its a sadness that his time as a Test batsman didnt quite catch: he was at one point in the position that Jos Buttler is in now, perched on the edge and wondering if his style fits, and if the five-dayy game will forever be a road not taken.dddddddddddd He would have been a strong Test match captain had his batting worked out. He may not have felt it when he got Alastair Cooks hospital pass as the 50-over captain just before the World Cup, but he is one of natures lucky generals. There is serendipity to the rise of this generation of England players coinciding with two consecutive home global tournaments, and Morgan has become their galvanising force, insisting rather than hoping that their cricket move towards the cutting edge.But there is not the unanimity of support that Cook now enjoys from the public. Morgans vacillations with the bat, and the amount of talent floating on the edges of the team, bring regular calls on social media for him to lose his place.They come from people who dont understand his power or his role. The solidity of his leadership exerts a powerful inward gravity on his team. Its a socialising force, offering a creative, progressive environment in which anything is possible. He is not playing a PR Game. He has the power of his convictions, Angus Fraser told the writer John Stern earlier this year.Morgan may have slid towards the establishment, but he is an uncompromising character, an Irishman who plays for England. He has been unconvinced about the trip to Bangladesh and hes sure enough of himself to pull out if he doesnt feel its right.Writing in the Telegraph, Morgans old ally Kevin Pietersen had a warning for him should he not lead the team on tour: When the going gets tough for him in the future, with the team losing, or a run of personal low scores, then he will find that the loyalty from his bosses will not be the same because he went against them.He and Pietersen seem to read the game in the same way, and like Pietersen, Morgan has enough swagger to make top dollar on the franchise circuit should he have to make a go of it there. You suspect also that he shares KPs opinion that it is too early to predict that the team will win these major tournaments with or without him, but if the cards fall his way, he will go down, like Hussain, Vaughan and Strauss, as a transformative figure in Englands recent history. ' ' '