Indians manager Terry Francona alters lineup, doesn't sleep well

Indians manager Terry Francona wasn't punishing rookie center fielder Tyler Naquin when he sat him in Game 7.

Naquin let a fly ball drop between him and right fielder Lonnie Chisenhall in the first inning of Game 6, a mistake that paved the way to the Cubs' 9-3 victory over Cleveland.

Later, Naquin came up with the bases loaded in the fourth but struck out.

Francona said he felt Naquin was "pressing a little bit. During the regular season you might kind of let him get through it, but with one game left and with [Corey] Kluber pitching, we're trying to put a premium on catching the ball."

Rajai Davis started in center field.

"You can tell he's pressing," Francona said of Naquin, batting .143 in the Series. "It's not punishment. It's trying to win."

And Davis sure helped in that respect. He hit a two-run homer in the eighth inning to tie the score at 6-6.

Francona, who joked about wearing his uniform back to his nearby apartment following Game 6, said he didn't sleep well Tuesday night.

"I had a nightmare that somebody broke my ribs," he said.

Francona said he woke up and realized he had fallen asleep on his TV remote control, which had pushed deep into his ribs and left a mark.

Beyond that, Francona, who ordered $44 worth of ice cream from room service while the team was in Chicago over the weekend, said his room looked like a "national disaster. I had peanut butter on my glasses. It was a bad night, man."

The Cubs' 9-3 win was the most watched World Series Game 6 since 1997.

The rating is the percentage of television households tuned to a program, and the share is the percentage showing a broadcast among those homes with TVs on at the time.

The prospect of the Cubs winning the franchise's first title in more than a century led thousands of Cubs fans to invade Progressive Field ahead of Game 7. There were large swaths of Chicago blue in a sea of Cleveland red an hour before first pitch.

StubHub reported a surge in sales of Game 7 tickets from the Chicago area. A downloadable standing room ticket was going for $750 an hour before the game.

Some Cubs fans are hoping they can break a 108-year-old World Series championship drought by leaving items at the New York grave of the middle man in the team's famed Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance double-play combination.

Johnny Evers was the second baseman for the Cubs team that won the 1908 World Series. He was immortalized a few years later in a New York newspaper reporter's 50-word poem, along with future fellow Hall of Famers shortstop Joe Tinker and first baseman Frank Chance.

• Jim Thome, the Indians' career home run leader with 377, threw out the ceremonial first pitch before Game 7. Thome, a former Twin, was a member of the last Cleveland team to play in the Series in 1997, when the Indians lost Game 7 to Florida.

• The Cubs and Indians each have 0-2 records in Game 7s. Chicago lost the 1945 World Series to Detroit and the 2003 NLCS to Florida, both at Wrigley. … Along with the '97 Series loss, the Indians dropped the 2007 ALCS at Boston.