Repeat after me: Shane Bieber is not Justin Bieber

Cleveland Indians pitcher Shane Bieber is the ace of the staff for a team that is in the thick of the AL playoff race. Justin Bieber is a wildly successful pop star who many people with common sense aren’t fond of. They are two different people. And Shane Bieber would like for everyone to remember that.

In fact, during “Players Weekend” in 2018, when players were allowed to wear any name on the back of their jersey, the Laguna Hills High alum chose “Not Justin” as his name.

This is something the fine folks at the Topps baseball card company may have forgotten.

Over the weekend, Bieber (Shane, not Justin), tweeted a picture of the back of one of his Topps baseball cards. On it, it says, “Justin was particularly comfortable on the road, where he went a team record 7-0.”

Topps responded with a tweet of its own that said, “Is it too late to say sorry?” Which of course is a lyric from the Bieber (Justin, not Shane) song “Sorry.”

The cynic in a person might say that Topps loves this because it could make the Bieber (Shane, not Justin) card more valuable, increasing sales of the cards. Let me respond for Topps: What do you mean?

Speaking of the Indians

They were locked in a scoreless pitching duel with the Angels on Saturday in Cleveland when, during the fifth inning, Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield was shown on the scoreboard watching the game from a stadium suite. Noticing he was on camera, Mayfield grabbed a beer can, bit into it and drank it as foam sprayed on his face. He then exhorted the crowd to cheer louder while pointing to the back of the Francisco Lindor jersey he was wearing.

The Indians then scored five runs.

“We all appreciate him,” Lindor said. “We’re all a fan of him. What he did with the beer was pretty impressive.”

Your favorite sports moment

What is your favorite all-time L.A. sports moment? Here’s the next one in our occasional series. Email me your favorite sports moment (houston.mitchell@latimes.com) and it might run in a future Morning Briefing and Sports Report newsletter.

The next one comes from Judge Kelvin D. Filer of Compton:

“I have several, but I think my all-time favorite has to be Game 4 of the 1987 NBA Finals. It is Lakers vs. Celtics…

“I was a Laker season ticket holder at the time and I am a diehard Lakers fan. At the time of that game, I was serving as an elected member of the Board of Trustees for the Compton Unified School District. Game 4 was taking place on a Tuesday evening, the SAME night as our regular school board meeting. We had recessed to go into “executive session” to discuss personnel items.

“Toward the end of the session, I asked if we could quickly look at the score of the game on the TV that was in the meeting room. Sure enough…it was the closing seconds of the game..the crowd is going crazy! I insisted that we watch the final minutes of the game. When the Celtics knocked a rebound out of bounds the Lakers are going to get one more chance to take the lead! My fellow members wanted to go back out to resume the meeting, but I refused to come out..i couldn’t go back out…I was a nervous wreck….so they stayed there with me!

“I am sure that the school board audience/public was wondering why we had not come back to resume the meeting. When Magic Johnson drove down the lane and hit the ‘Junior Sky Hook’ and the Lakers won the game, we were going crazy – all seven of us – in the back room! To this day, I have never revealed that this was the reason for our tardiness….it was well worth it!”