"Wrigley Field? What's that?"
"Why is that stuff growing on the walls?"
The jokes come from the sense that this kid Merritt, this 24-year-old whose second Major League start just so happens to be today in Game 5 of the American League Championship Series, is far from affected by his surroundings -- even if those surroundings are a racous Rogers Centre with the Indians trying to close out their first AL pennant in nearly two decades.
"It's not that he's naïve," reliever Dan Otero said. "It's just that he's not really into baseball history or anything like that.