In the top of the third inning Tuesday, David Ross got a low slider on 2-2 and pulled a line drive into left field for a single. Thanks to a microphone that he wore for the television broadcast, we know a little bit about the events surrounding that single:

• It was preceded by a friendly fist bump that he gave to a young fan, who responded by immediately asking for Ross' bat, because kids do.

• It coincided with the cutest little grunt sneaking out of Ross as he swung, not so much like a Serena Williams grunt as the grunt of a dad lifting luggage that's caught under heavier luggage as it passes him on the conveyer belt.

• It was followed by a conversation with Mike Napoli, a former teammate, who was playing first base for Cleveland. That conversation included this observation from Ross: "This guy's slider is filthy."

It's the "this guy" that I want to examine. "This guy." Ross was referring to Corey Kluber, the pitcher who leads all American Leaguers in WAR over the past three years, and a personal acquaintance of Napoli, as "this guy." Is it possible that David Ross doesn't know Corey Kluber?

After Corey Kluber's Game 1 win in the World Series, c'mon, no excuses: You have to know who he is. Jamie Squire/Getty Images

I propose that the answer is yes, it is possible. Not certain, but possible. A case for this possibility follows.

1. There is no direct evidence Ross knows Kluber's name. After three hours of searching, I can find no evidence that Ross has ever said Kluber's name publicly. He has never tweeted at him, or about him. He has never said his name in a postgame interview that was reported publicly. This is proof of nothing, yet, but it is, at least, thus far, in bulletpoint one, an absence of evidence.

2. Consider Corey Kluber. For most of human existence, Kluber has been unknown to everybody. For billions of years, he didn't even exist, and no prophecy foretold his coming. When he finally did explode onto this earth, it was with the momentum of soft-serve ice cream melting through the bottom of a paper-wrapped cone. He went undrafted out of high school and landed at a university called Stetson that, if I gave you 10 guesses, you probably wouldn't put in the right state. Before Kluber, Stetson had produced eight major leaguers who combined for -6.0 WAR in their careers. He was drafted by the Padres in the fourth round, immediately between Sean Morgan and Nolan Gallagher, neither of whom reached High-A.

When the Padres traded him in a three-team trade some three years later, the San Diego Union-Tribune didn't mention Kluber until the seventh paragraph. And when the Indians broke camp three years after that, Kluber, 27 years old, went back to Triple-A, where he got pounded for a 6.57 ERA in two starts. Which is all to say that, if you were to pick a random day in the history of the world, the history of Corey Kluber, or the history of Kluber's baseball career, you'd be likely to land on a day when his own catcher hadn't heard of him.

3. Consider Kluber further: After those two starts in Triple-A, Michael Bourn, the Indians' high-profile free agent signee from the previous winter, hurt his finger. Kluber was called up to take his spot on the active roster. He would never go back down, and since then he has been, arguably, the best pitcher in the American League. And yet, if you weren't a serious baseball fan (or an Indians fan), how would you know who he is? So far as I can tell, he has no prominent commercials, unless you count this video for a T-shirt touting his 2016 presidential campaign. (This ad is indeed the exception that proves the rule: No pollster includes Kluber in its presidential polling, Kluber was not invited to any of the debates, and according to FiveThirtyEight, Kluber is not likely to win a single state this November.)

He has, in fact, participated in no successfully viral content. An attempt at viral content, in 2014, was a flop by viral content standards:

That video has 8,400 views and just one comment. The videos that came immediately before it in the MLBFanCave MLB Player Originals series got two or three times as many views, despite starring such second- or third-tier stars as Kevin Kiermaier, Will Smith and Ervin Santana. Think about all your memories of Corey Kluber. Were any of them with him not on the mound? Can you think of one moment you saw him not on the mound? You can't. Now imagine him not on the mound. What's he doing in your imagination? He's struggling to crack open walnuts, isn't he? Kluber is a tough sell.

Worse, even his pitching is, according to Jason Kipnis, boring:

He leads the world in stats, but if you had to make a case for why David Ross should know him, and you couldn't use stats, you'd have this:

1. He was one of five candidates for the Final Vote spot in the 2014 All-Star Game. 2. He pitched in the All-Star Game in 2016, and even got the win. 3. He won the 2014 Cy Young Award. 4. His nickname is, according to reliable sources, Hans Kluber. 5. He is in the Atlantic-Sun Hall of Fame. 6. Cleveland was once the fifth-largest city in America.

Taking them one by one:

1. He finished only fourth, in the year he won the Cy Young Award. 2. OK, but the lowest-viewed All-Star game in history. 3. This is convincing. 4. No it isn't. 5. The video honoring him for his induction has been viewed 23 times. 6. I did not know that.

Now, taken together, this should be more than enough for a baseball fan to know who Kluber is. But...

4. Is Ross definitely a baseball fan? Clearly, he knows more about baseball the sport than you or me or probably 24 Cubs, but does he know about baseball the entertainment? In 2014, he provided postseason commentary for ESPN. It was for that that he signed up for Twitter, and his first announcement to the world was:

Excited to be at ESPN talking postseason. Who's gonna win? Need all the help I can get! — David Ross (@D_Ross3) September 30, 2014

This seems like the sort of request you might expect from somebody who doesn't know who Corey Kluber is. He has, since then, tweeted 842 times, and besides his current teammates he has mentioned only 13 living players, active or retired:

Pedro Martinez

Dave Roberts

Latroy Hawkins

Dan Haren

Edwin Jackson

Kevin Cash

Sal Perez

Madison Bumgarner

Giancarlo Stanton

Jake Peavy

Mike Napoli

John Lackey

Andrew Miller

Chipper Jones

All but four of them -- Hawkins, who was retiring; Stanton, who was in the middle of winning the Home Run Derby; and Bumgarner and Perez, who were playing in the World Series at the time -- were previously his teammates. (Pedro was a special assistant with the Red Sox while he was there.) Ross knows his teammates very well. He's one of the best friends most of them have ever had. He's a famously great friend. He's notably uncurious about the rest of the league.

This is understandable! Ross has a very full life. He goes to Coldplay concerts, he golfs at Pebble Beach, he donates socks to homeless shelters, he follows the Blackhawks, he attends comedy shows at Second City, and he undoubtedly does many other things that he doesn't post photos of on social media. He also has multiple children, who play sports and keep him busy. In fact, this year during the All-Star break he went home to be with them. Did he watch Kluber in the All-Star game? Mayyyybe. But after tweeting about Stanton in the Derby, he posted a photo of himself and his kids eating their favorite subway sandwiches, and that was the last Twitter saw of him for the week. I'd like to think he got a few days away from the game.

5. But wait. Has he ever faced Kluber? Yes. He has. On Aug. 24, 2015, Kluber faced the Cubs in Wrigley. He took a perfect game into the sixth. He was a real star. You'd probably notice him. This complicates things. Except!

In the third inning, Ross hit a fat fastball just about forever. It went way out down the left-field line and just barely went foul, ever so barely. Umpires had to huddle and everything. Then, in the sixth, guess who broke up the perfect game? It was Ross, with a single. So Ross faced Kluber, but he wouldn't have been blown away by anything he saw. And he wouldn't have remembered anything historic about the outing, which would end up not only as imperfect but as a loss, with Kris Bryant homering to give the Cubs a late 2-1 win. Ross would probably remember that game, but would he remember much about the pitcher? Besides what pitches he threw? Seems very possible that Ross would remember Kluber just enough to think of him as "this guy." Same as the other 801 pitchers that Ross has faced in his career, nearly 600 of whom Ross faced three or fewer times (as he did Kluber). Do we think Ross remembers all 600 of those guys? Do we think he knows a few hundred only as "this guy"?

Here's how I'd place the likelihoods here:

Most likely -- 55 percent -- he knows Corey Kluber. Of course he knows him. How could he not? Let's be real here for a second.

Less likely -- 30 percent -- he knows Kluber as a star pitcher, an ace, the guy you don't want to see three times in a World Series, but basically doesn't know his name. He prepared for this matchup, but with a series of "this guy" questions: To the video coordinator, "Can you get me my at-bats against this guy?" To Kris Bryant, "What's this guy throwing you?" Maybe he even almost knows his name but doesn't want to embarrass himself if it's actually Kasey Cluber.

Still less likely -- 12 percent -- he recognizes him, but he's not sure from where.

Least likely -- 3 percent -- he doesn't recognize him at all and thought, at first, Kluber was the local bank president throwing out the ceremonial first pitch.

I'm not sure, but I think the Coldplay concert is a clue: Ross is old. Old. Like a lot of us who were young, he used to really study the world for new things, new friends, new smells, new music. And like a lot of us who are old, he stopped doing that. He came to appreciate that new things would come into and out of his life, but that the foundation he laid as a younger man -- family, teammates, the churning guitar work of Jonny Buckland -- would be there for him every day. I bet David Ross could tell you what Carlos Zambrano's record was in 2005, but that Corey Kluber is just another young guy, come to take his friends' roster spots.

There were two great stories Tuesday night. One was Kluber. Baseball is a kleptomaniac, stealing potential from great players who committed no sin worse than having an elbow or being one-millionth of a second too late to recognize spin. But it's also, somehow, zero sum, and for every great career that it takes from a top prospect who flops, it distributes a miraculously successful career to somebody who had been in the seventh paragraph of a trade story. Corey Kluber made it to 27 without knowing how good he was. But on Tuesday, there it was, the mastery and the dominance, and in front of the biggest audience that ever saw him pitch. I've been on Twitter watching his follower count go up by about two per minute over the past hour, all after midnight Eastern. These are people who, more than likely, turned on a game last night and said, "Who's that?" and by the end wanted him in their life.

The other story was Ross. It's possible -- not likely -- that Ross played the final game of his career last night, if the Cubs were to somehow get swept this week. In that possible-but-not-probable final game, he got a base hit against the best pitcher in the American League. He made a spectacular throw to second to throw out Francisco Lindor, saving Jon Lester from the mounting in-game anxiety over his yips. He made a tough catch against the screen to catch a popout and get Lester out of a nearly disastrous first inning. And, with a fistbump to a kid and a giddy snippet of conversation with Mike Napoli at first base, he showed -- on the biggest stage -- what a nice person he is. Now, the world knows.