CHICAGO – Three times a week, Roberto Perez retreats to a back room at Progressive Field, eases himself off his feet and gets needles jabbed into his face. Sometimes, they are juiced with an electrical pulse to stimulate his facial muscles, too. Usually it’s eight or so – one in the Pupil Bone Hole, another in the Welcome Fragrance, and can’t forget about the Earth Granary. Perez is here at the World Series because of these acupuncture points. Without them, he may not be playing baseball period.

Every October offers a surprise or two, and Roberto Perez – 33rd-round pick in 2008, skimpy $10,000 bonus baby, veteran of the minor leagues for more than a half-decade and sufferer of Bell’s palsy, a debilitating autoimmune disease that paralyzes the facial muscles – is assuredly the biggest. In this World Series between his Cleveland Indians – and the pitching staff is very much his – and the Chicago Cubs, the 27-year-old Perez’s ascendance was evident in Game 1, when he hit two home runs, and will be paramount as Game 3 dawns at Wrigley Field at 8 p.m. ET Friday.

He is the Indians’ catcher, their game-caller, their pitch-framer, their last line of defense in outwitting a Cubs lineup that put 19 runners on base in a Game 2 victory that evened the series. He is the one who guided Cleveland’s threadbare pitching staff through the Boston Red Sox and Toronto Blue Jays and is endeavoring to spoil Chicago’s October likewise. As recently as last year, he was also someone who couldn’t passively close his left eye.

“I could blink,” Perez said. “But I had to help myself to do it.”

View photos Roberto Perez’s two home runs helped lift the Indians to their Game 1 victory over the Cubs. (USA Today) More

Bell’s palsy attacked him out of nowhere, as it does the tens of thousands of people in the United States victimized by it every year, on June 16, 2013, soon after the Indians had promoted him to Triple-A. Perez awoke, and the left side of his face was numb. His eye drooped. His mouth sagged. It looked like his face was melting. He tried to move it. Nothing.

Frightened, he scurried to see the team trainer, who feared it might be a stroke. Not until a day later did a doctor diagnose Bell’s palsy, a disorder without an immediate cure.

The effects were profound. Because he couldn’t close his left eye, Perez had trouble sleeping. “I used to wear a patch at night,” he said. “Kind of like a pirate.” His catcher’s mask couldn’t deflect the perils of squatting behind the plate for nine innings, be it blowing dirt or feisty gusts. “When the wind hits you in the eye,” Perez said, “it gets kind of watery, and you want to blink, only you can’t.”

With no guaranteed course of treatment, Indians president Chris Antonetti said the team looked beyond baseball: “How do you help the person get through it, because it not only affects his baseball life but his life in general.” They wondered whether a disabled-list stint might befit Perez.

“The organization talked to me about shutting me down,” he said. “I told them I want to keep playing. I’ve got a family I’ve got to take care of. I’m playing baseball. I’ve got pride in what I do. I want to make it. You guys are not shutting me down.

“You start thinking and wondering whether you’re going to make it or not, if it’s for you or not. I was going to make it.”

View photos Acupuncture helped give Roberto Perez relief from Bell’s palsy. (Getty) More

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