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IF YOU’RE THE TYPE to take the long view on things, what could be the biggest series in Texas baseball history starts today at Globe Life Field, and the moment is more than a century in the making. The buildup began before the American League — in which the Texas Rangers and Houston Astros now play — even existed. After all, they’ve been playing baseball in The Lone Star State for a long time. A very long time.

The three-game series between the Rangers and Astros has 135 years of baggage behind it, dating back to the first incarnation of the Texas League, which began play in 1888.

Now, in September 2023, all eyes in baseball will be on Arlington. And why wouldn’t they be? The breakout Rangers led the division for most of the season behind a potent offense and an experienced rotation of veterans brought in via trades and free agency. Then the Astros, who overcame a so-so, injury-laden start, emerged into a three-way turnstile atop the West with the Rangers and upstart Seattle Mariners. This week, the last regular-season meeting between the two Texas teams this season, will be the last time we can be sure to see the in-state rivals go toe-to-toe with the stakes sky high.

• Winning the division is going to be huge for the postseason chances of the team that accomplishes it. The division flag in this year’s AL West means a first-round bye, as the AL Central champion is going to be the No. 3 seed. Thus, first in the West is the difference between a bye and division series home advantage, or ending up in a wild-card encounter as the road team.

• The matchup features some of baseball’s most exciting hitters. You have core hitters like Alex Bregman, Jose Altuve and Yordan Alvarez for the Astros; Marcus Semien, Corey Seager and Adolis Garcia for the Rangers.

• In the dugouts, you have two future Hall of Fame skippers: Texas’ Bruce Bochy, looking for his fourth title, and Houston’s Dusty Baker, coming off his first. And the pair have plenty of personal history to boot. They first squared off as managers in 1995. As players, they faced each other on Sept. 7, 1978, when Baker homered for the Los Angeles Dodgers in a 3-2 win over Bochy and Astros.

• If the pitching probable schedules hold, we’re headed for an epic matchup in the series finale, featuring two Cooperstown-bound aces. Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander began this season as teammates with the New York Mets but joined this rivalry, on opposite sides, at the trade deadline. This is a best-case scenario, though, and one that may be in jeopardy after Scherzer had to leave his last start early with forearm tightness.

• There is bad blood brewing. The last time the teams met, benches cleared. There weren’t any punches thrown, but Semien and Martin Maldonado were ejected after their back-and-forth preceded the near melee.

There’s no shortage of storylines. And so despite 135 years of history, it’s easy to make the case that, until these two teams meet someday in October, this series is the crescendo for the sport in Texas.


IN THE TEXAS LEAGUE starting in the 19th century, Dallas and Houston battled in different versions of the circuit over the decades. As the cities grew in size and national influence, and Major League Baseball turned its gaze westward in the late 1950s, it was inevitable that Texas would be on the docket. And so, the Houston Colt 45s joined the National League in 1962. Three years later, they were redubbed the Astros when baseball’s first indoor venue, the Astrodome, opened to much fanfare.

Up north, baseball fans in the Dallas-Fort Worth region had to wait until 1972, when the second incarnation of the Washington Senators moved into Arlington Stadium for big league ball.

At last, Texas had two major league clubs. But for the first two decades of their mutual existence, the Rangers and Astros existed more on parallel tracks than intersecting ones.

The origins of the Lone Star Series, or the Silver Boot Series as many still like to call it, traces back to a series of popular end-of-spring-training exhibitions that began in 1992. The highlight of the exhibitions was 1993, when more than 53,000 fans turned out at the Astrodome for the return of Nolan Ryan, once an Astro and then a Ranger, and forever the connective tissue between the two franchises.

The Silver Boot Series moved to regular-season play when the Astros and Rangers began meeting in interleague games beginning in 2001. That’s when the winner of the series began receiving — you guessed it — a Silver Boot Trophy. The bragging rights contests continued in that vein for more than a decade.

During the 42 seasons the Astros and Rangers played in different leagues, they made the playoffs in the same season just twice — 1998 and 1999 — but neither team won a playoff series in those Octobers. That’s the closest we ever came to an All-Texas World Series, a possibility that ended when Houston was moved to the AL West in 2013.

Instead of that ultimate Lone Star October moment, we got a brand-new intrastate division rivalry. With the Astros and Rangers now in the same division, competing for the same championships, the pieces were in place for the Lone Star Series to become one of baseball’s marquee matchups.

And sure enough, in 2015, the Astros and Rangers both made the playoffs in their third season as division rivals. That campaign featured a pair of key September series, including a four-game sweep by the Rangers in the middle of the month in Arlington that turned a 1½-game Texas deficit to a 2½-game lead. Texas never relinquished the lead. Yet, as with the clubs’ other concurrent postseason appearance, their seasons ended in the division series round and neither team reached the 90-win plateau during that campaign.

Since then, the rivalry has been more of a slow burn, mostly because the teams haven’t been in prime contention at the same time since that 2015 prequel.

Both teams were over .500 in 2016, when the Rangers won the division with a 95-67 record. But the Astros took a step back that season and weren’t really in the division race after early August.

After that, Houston went into dynasty mode. They’ve played in every ALCS since then, winning four pennants and two World Series. The Rangers, though, entered a prolonged rebuild, landing well under .500 six seasons in a row and finishing an average of 29 games out of first place, all while their cross-state rival was running roughshod over the American League.

Alas, as we know, you can’t force these things. The best rivalries happen organically, through a sequence of contentious encounters that, preferably, feature a little rancor, memorable personalities, and — most importantly — real stakes. For the Lone Star Series, the convergence of all those factors is this week.

Texas’ two teams, as mutually strong as they’ve been at any time since they became division foes, are meeting for the last time this season. They are in a neck-and-neck battle for the division race and crucial playoff position. The Rangers have been struggling of late, but they enter the matchup on the momentum of Garcia’s game-winning homer against Minnesota on Sunday.

You have two teams that don’t like each other, representing the two biggest metroplexes in the biggest state of the continental U.S. You have forecasts for scorching, 100-degree weather. And we get to finish it off hopefully with a showdown between two generational aces with a combined 467 career wins between them.

Given the status of the playoff races and the strength of these teams, it’s possible even bigger clashes lay in the offing — maybe even the first-ever Silver Boot playoff showdown. They might have to get a second boot for that.

For now, this is what we’re guaranteed. Astros and Rangers, for the last time this season. If all the pieces fall into place, it just might turn out to be the biggest series in Texas baseball history, 135 years in the making.

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Schwarber reaches 1,000-hit milestone with HR

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Schwarber reaches 1,000-hit milestone with HR

NEW YORK — Philadelphia Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber topped Mark McGwire for most home runs among a player’s first 1,000 hits, hitting long ball No. 319 during Friday night’s 12-5 victory over the New York Yankees.

“I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not,” Schwarber said.

Ten days after lifting the National League to victory in the first All-Star Game swing-off, Schwarber keeps going deep. He hit a pair of two-run homers Friday night, with the first drive, his milestone hit, starting the comeback from a 2-0 deficit. He got the ball back after it was grabbed by a Phillies fan attending with his friends in Yankee Stadium’s right-center-field seats.

“I saw it on the video and then I see the dude tugging,” Schwarber said. “I’m like: ‘Oh, they all got Philly stuff on.’ That was cool.”

He met the trio after the game, gave an autographed ball to each and exchanged hugs. When he went to get a third ball to autograph, one of the three said he just wanted the potential free agent to re-sign with the Phillies.

“You show up to the field every single day trying to get a win at the end of the day, and I think our fans kind of latch on to that, right?” Schwarber said. “It’s been fantastic these last 3½ years, four years now. The support that we get from our fans and it means a lot to me that, you know, that they attach themselves to our team.”

Schwarber tied it at 2-2 in the fifth against Will Warren when he hit a 413-foot drive on a first-pitch fastball.

After J.T. Realmuto‘s three-run homer off Luke Weaver built a 6-3 lead in a four-run seventh and the Yankees closed within a run in the bottom half, Schwarber sent an Ian Hamilton fastball 380 feet into the right-field seats.

Schwarber reached 1,000 hits with eight more homers than McGwire. Schwarber has 36 homers this year, three shy of major league leader Cal Raleigh, and six homers in seven games since he was voted All-Star MVP. He has 33 multihomer games.

“I don’t know where we’d be without him,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said. “Comes up with big hit after big hit after big hit. It’s just — it’s amazing.”

Schwarber, 32, is eligible for free agency this fall after completing a four-year, $79 million contract. He homered on all three of his swings in the All-Star Game tiebreaker, and when the second half began, Phillies managing partner John Middleton proclaimed: “We love him. We want to keep him.”

“He’s been an incredible force all season long,” Realmuto said. “What he’s meant to his team, his offense, it’s hard to put in words.”

A World Series champion for the 2016 Chicago Cubs, Schwarber has reached 35 homers in all four seasons with the Phillies. He’s batting .255 with 82 RBIs and a .960 OPS.

He also has almost as many home runs as singles (46).

Schwarber had not been aware he topped McGwire for most homers among 1,000 hits.

“I had no clue. I didn’t even know it was my 1,000th, to be honest with you,” he said.

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A’s Kurtz becomes first rookie with 4-HR game

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A's Kurtz becomes first rookie with 4-HR game

Nick Kurtz of the Athletics became the first rookie in Major League Baseball history to hit four home runs in a game, part of a spectacular Friday night for the 22-year-old that will go down as one of the greatest offensive displays the sport has seen.

Kurtz also matched the MLB record with 19 total bases in the 15-3 triumph against the Astros in Houston.

“It’s arguably the best game I’ve ever watched from a single player,” Athletics manager Mark Kotsay said. “This kid continues to have jaw-dropping moments.”

Kurtz didn’t make an out all night, going deep in the second, sixth, eighth and ninth innings. He also doubled — a 381-foot drive that would have been out in six major league ballparks — and singled on his 6-for-6 night to equal Shawn Green, who had four homers, six hits and 19 total bases for the Los Angeles Dodgers on May 23, 2002 at Milwaukee.

Kurtz and Green are the only players with six hits in a four-homer game.

“It’s hard to think about this day being kind of real, it still feels like a dream,” Kurtz said in a postgame television interview. “So it’s pretty remarkable. I’m kind of speechless. Don’t really know what to say.”

It was the 20th four-homer game in major league history and second this season. Arizona’s Eugenio Suárez did it on April 26 against Atlanta. No player has ever hit five home runs in a game.

Kurtz finished with eight RBIs and six runs scored.

The 6-foot-5, 22-year-old slugger has 23 homers in 66 games this season. The fourth pick in last year’s amateur draft out of Wake Forest, he made his major league debut April 23 and hit his first homer May 13.

He is the youngest player with a four-homer game. Pat Seerey of the Chicago White Sox was 25 when he homered four times on July 18, 1948.

“This is the first time my godparents have been here, so they probably have to come in the rest of the year,” Kurtz said. “My parents flew in today. They’ve been here a bunch, but it was cool to have some family here for that.”

On Friday, Kurtz homered off each of the Astros’ four pitchers: Ryan Gusto, Nick Hernandez, Kaleb Ort and outfielder Cooper Hummel, who worked the ninth with the game out of hand. His longest drive was his third, a 414-foot solo shot off Ort in the eighth.

For his fourth homer, Kurtz hit an opposite-field line drive to the Crawford Boxes in left field on a 77 mph, 2-0 pitch from Hummel. The three-run shot made it 15-2.

“With a positional player on the mound, I’m just trying to move the ball forward,” Kurtz said. “You don’t want to be the guy that strikes out. That’s only my second at bat ever off a positional player, so I don’t know. Just trying to move the ball forward and get something that I can touch, and I hit another one.”

Kurtz’s double in the fourth inning hit just below the yellow line over the visitor’s bullpen, narrowly missing what would have been a fifth homer.

“Everybody was just like, laughing,” A’s shortstop Jacob Wilson said. “How is he doing it? This is not normal. He’s playing a different sport than us right now. It’s not baseball, it’s just T-ball what he’s doing right now.”

With the baseballs from his last two homers inside a plastic bag at his locker, Kurtz signed scorecards from all four A’s broadcasters and a lineup card. One of the scorecards and a bat were bound for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Kurtz has been the best hitter in the majors in July, ranking first in batting average (.425), on-base percentage (.494), slugging percentage (1.082), runs (22), doubles (13), homers (11) and RBIs (27).

He extended his hitting streak to 12 games, and his 23 home runs are the most for an A’s rookie since Yoenis Céspedes in 2012 and fourth most in franchise history.

Kurtz entered Friday as a -325 favorite at ESPN BET to win American League Rookie of the Year. His odds moved to -2500 after Friday night.

Information from ESPN Research and The Associated Press was used in this report.

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Yankees land 3B, acquire McMahon from Rockies

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Yankees land 3B, acquire McMahon from Rockies

NEW YORK — The Yankees on Friday acquired third baseman Ryan McMahon from the Colorado Rockies in exchange for minor league pitchers Griffin Herring and Josh Grosz, the teams announced.

The Yankees assumed the remainder of McMahon’s contract, which includes approximately $4.5 million for the rest of 2025 and $32 million over the next two seasons, a source told ESPN.

An All-Star last season, McMahon, 30, was batting .217 with 16 home runs, a .717 OPS and a National League-leading 127 strikeouts in 100 games for Colorado in 2025. After a dreadful start to the season through April, he has been significantly better, with a .246 batting average, 14 home runs and an .804 OPS. He hit home runs in the first two games after the All-Star break and another Tuesday. He is on pace to keep his four-year 20-homer streak alive.

Defensively, McMahon is a Gold Glove-caliber third baseman whose four Outs Above Average is third in the majors this season. He joins a Yankees club that has been marred by sloppy defense. On Wednesday, the Yankees committed four errors against the American East-leading Toronto Blue Jays.

“He has had some ups and downs offensively this year,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said of McMahon. “I know, over the last month, he’s really swinging the bat well, but he’s a presence, and he can really defend over there at third and has for a number of years. So, we’re excited to get him.”

Arizona Diamondbacks third baseman Eugenio Suarez, who began Friday with 36 home runs and an MLB-leading 86 RBIs, could be the best hitter moved before the July 31 trade deadline, but the Yankees were not particularly aggressive in pursuing him, a source told ESPN’s Jeff Passan.

Though McMahon’s offensive production resulted in a 92 OPS+, which suggests he has been 8% worse than the average major league hitter this season, he’s still a significant offensive upgrade at third base for New York. The Yankees have had Oswald Peraza, one of the worst hitters in the majors, playing third base nearly every day since the club released DJ LeMahieu, another former Rockies player, earlier this month and moved Jazz Chisholm Jr. to second base.

Peraza, though a strong defender, is slashing .147/.208/.237 in 69 games this season. His 24 wRC+ ranks last among the 310 hitters with at least 160 plate appearances this season.

McMahon has played his first eight-plus seasons with the Rockies. They selected him in the second round of the 2013 draft. He debuted four years later and became a regular in 2019. By then, the Rockies were descending to the bottom of the NL West. This year, they’re 26-76 and could finish with the most losses in major league history.

He leaves that environment for New York’s pressure cooker and a club with World Series aspirations, a change the Yankees hope can help McMahon.

“Hopefully, the environment is a great thing for him, that he falls into that and doesn’t have to be the guy,” Boone said. “Go do your thing. Go find the role. But it’s our job — my job, staff, coaches, players — to make sure they’re welcomed and get them as comfortable as possible.”

The price for McMahon — and his team control over the next two seasons — was a pair of pitchers who have not reached Double-A.

Herring, 22, has a 1.71 ERA in 89⅓ innings across 16 starts between Low- and High-A this season. He was a sixth-round pick out of LSU in the 2024 draft.

Grosz, an 11th-round pick in 2023, had a 4.14 ERA in 87 innings over 16 games (15 starts) for High-A Hudson Valley this season.

With third base addressed, the Yankees will seek to acquire pitchers to bolster their rotation and bullpen. Luis Gil‘s return should help. The right-hander, who has been out all season because of a lat injury, made his third rehab start Wednesday. Boone said there’s “a good chance” Gil gets another start in the minors before making his season debut.

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