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HOUSTON — There is no stage in sports quite like it. In football and basketball and hockey, in boxing and tennis and soccer, every competitor stands on a level playing surface. Not so in baseball, where one performer starts the action from a raised circle in the center of it all.
Everything flows from the pitcher, and the 115th World Series, starting here Tuesday between the Houston Astros and the Washington Nationals, could be a spectacle of dominance from the mound.
The Astros are the only American League team with three starters who worked 200 innings this season: Gerrit Cole, Justin Verlander and Zack Greinke.