Bird homer lifts Yankees

Dating to the start of the 2014 season, Cleveland Indians relief pitcher Andrew Miller owns a stellar 1.72 ERA in the regular season, and he entered Sunday night’s Game 3 of the American League Division Series with an outrageous career 0.90 ERA in the postseason. New York Yankees first baseman Greg Bird hit .190 in 48 games in 2017, his second consecutive season derailed by injuries.

But October baseball can get awful weird, and Bird made Miller the goat Sunday with a 396foot blast down the right-field line that broke a scoreless tie in the bottom of the seventh inning and extended the Yankees’ season at least one more day with a 1-0 victory to cut the Indians’ bestof-five series lead to 2-1.

Starters Masahiro Tanaka of the Yankees and Carlos Carrasco of the Indians matched zeros for the first five innings. Cleveland threatened against Tanaka in the fourth with a one-out triple by Jason Kipnis, but Tanaka struck out Jose Ramirez and Jay Bruce to strand Kipnis.

In the sixth, Indians shortstop Francisco Lindor turned on a Tanaka splitter that looked destined for the right-field grandstands, but right fielder Aaron Judge used all of his 6-7 frame to corral the potential homer.

Carrasco, for his part, didn’t allow a baserunner past first base until the bottom of the sixth, when a Gary Sanchez single bookended by two walks loaded the bases for Starlin Castro with two outs.

But with the go-ahead run 90 feet from home, Terry Francona turned to Miller to yield a weak pop-up that ended the inning.

But Miller showed rare humanity in the bottom of the seventh, yielding the towering homer to lefty-swinging Bird and taking the first loss of his postseason career.