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PHILADELPHIA — Every year, October baseball is a treat, a mish-mash of drama, intrigue, strategy, excitement and nerves frayed and fried. Game 7s take each of those elements and supercharge them. Sports exist for series that go the distance. And this October has gifted a pair of them.

Two days. Two Game 7s.

Early Monday evening, the Arizona Diamondbacks handed the Philadelphia Phillies their first home loss of this postseason, booking a Game 7 in the National League Championship Series on Tuesday at Citizens Bank Park. As the Diamondbacks reveled in extending their season with a 5-1 win, the Texas Rangers were in the process of extinguishing the Houston Astros in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series, an 11-4 drubbing that kept alive hopes of the franchise’s first championship in 63 years of existence.

As little theater as the wild card and division series rounds this year provided, the LCS have made up for it. And Tuesday’s affair, featuring the star-laden Phillies aiming to make up for their World Series loss last season against the “scrappy,” “gritty” — their words — Diamondbacks attempting to turn an 84-win season into a championship, presents a tantalizing story, regardless of outcome, playing out in real time.

This is baseball at its best. Sure, games are always binary — win or lose — but Game 7s offer a twist: win or go home. They’re not uncommon, exactly, but they are rare enough that the Phillies, who played their first game in 1883 and have played more than 20,000 games in their history, have never participated in a Game 7 — until now.

The last time both championship series in a full season went to Game 7s was 2004, and both series were all-timers. (It also happened during the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season.) It speaks to how special this postseason has become, a consideration not lost on the Diamondbacks, who already disposed of a pair of division champions (the Milwaukee Brewers and Los Angeles Dodgers) and are aiming to fell a Phillies team that entered the NLCS as distinct favorites.

“It could go well, and we’ll celebrate, and it could go poorly, and it could even be my fault,” Diamondbacks closer Paul Sewald said. “But this is why you play. To play in this month. To play Game 7.”

It’s the biggest stage, and one set for indelible moments, as the Rangers and Astros illustrated Monday night.

It’s where Texas outfielder Adolis Garcia concluded the series of his life with a game that etched him in history books. Three days ago, a 99 mph fastball from Astros reliever Bryan Abreu tagged Garcia in his shoulder two innings after he punctuated a three-run home run with a sloth-caliber trot around the bases. The Rangers slugger’s Game 7 coda included four hits in five-at bats, a pair of home runs and five runs batted in.

It’s where Bruce Bochy has cemented his case for the Hall of Fame. The Rangers’ manager, who came out of retirement to take over a team that lost 94 games last season and 102 the year before, is now 6-0 in winner-take-all games, including three Game 7s. He is the first manager to win an LCS with three different organizations. He was the perfect shepherd for the team that spent $500 million on a middle infield in free agency before the 2022 season and another $250 million on pitching this winter and then got Max Scherzer and Jordan Montgomery, who together covered the first five innings of Game 7, at the trade deadline.

Every team’s path to Game 7 is different. The Rangers relied on their bats; the Astros seemed to survive on pure will. Philadelphia rode its stars, Arizona its moxie, and, perhaps more unexpectedly than on the other side of the bracket, their NLCS clash has also produced captivating baseball.

Game 6 showcased the Diamondbacks at their best: hitting home runs and stealing bases and getting five fantastic innings from starter Merrill Kelly and four more from a once-maligned bullpen that found itself at the most opportune moment. Tonight, the calculus for the Diamondbacks is simple: score early and quiet the raucous crowd at the Bank. In this series, when the Phillies get on the board in the first inning, they are 3-0; when they’re held scoreless, they’re 0-3.

“That’s what we need to do all the time,” Arizona shortstop Geraldo Perdomo said. “The first two games there were so loud, and I think [Monday] we answered early. … In any stadium, when the opposite team scores first, the crowd — it’s not loud how it used to be in the beginning. That’s what we need to do for [Game 7], too.”

Philadelphia won’t make it easy. The same mashers who have pummeled 10 home runs this series — Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber, Trea Turner, J.T. Realmuto and Nick Castellanos — will look to add to the total. Phillies starter Ranger Suarez went toe-to-toe with D-backs rookie Brandon Pfaadt in the brilliantly pitched Game 3, tossing 5⅓ scoreless innings to Pfaadt’s 5⅔. For whatever gap there might be on paper, the NLCS participants are about as even as it gets on the field.

And now, it comes down to Game 7. When Perdomo thinks of Game 7, he remembers the winter league battles between Aguilas and Licey in his native Dominican Republic, that rivalry the country’s equivalent of Yankees-Red Sox. Pfaadt thinks back to just a year ago, when he started and won Game 7 for the Triple-A Pacific Coast League title.

This, though? This is the big leagues. This is for a shot at the World Series. If stars are made in October, legends are made in Game 7.

No, the seventh game won’t prove anything writ large the first six haven’t already. It will, though, send one team to Arlington, Texas, for Game 1 of the World Series on Friday and the other one home for the winter. The stakes are almost too colossal for one game, and yet those stakes are precisely what make Game 7s so exceptional.

This is why we watch. One Game 7 is in the books, and another is coming at 8 p.m. ET. Nothing churns the stomach and induces nausea and fires up the dopamine quite like it.

Isn’t it great?

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Now in LF, Altuve asks off Astros’ leadoff spot

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Now in LF, Altuve asks off Astros' leadoff spot

HOUSTON — Jose Altuve asked manager Joe Espada to move him out of the leadoff spot and into the second hole for the Houston Astros. The reason? He wanted more time to get to the dugout from left field.

Altuve is playing left for the first time in his career after spending his first 14 MLB seasons at second base. “I just need like 10 more seconds,” he said.

The 34-year-old Altuve made the transition to the outfield this season after the trade of Kyle Tucker and the departure of Alex Bregman shook up Houston’s lineup.

Jeremy Peña was in the leadoff spot for Monday night’s game against Detroit. Altuve didn’t suggest that Peña be the one to take his leadoff spot.

“I just told Joe that maybe he can hit me second some games at some point, and he did it today,” Altuve said. “I just need like that little extra time to come from left field, and he decided to put Jeremy [there].”

Peña entered Monday hitting .255 with three homers and 11 RBIs. He hit first in Sunday’s 7-3 win over Kansas City — with Altuve getting a day off — and had two hits and three RBIs.

Along with giving him a little extra time to get ready to bat, Altuve thinks the athletic Peña batting leadoff could boost a lineup that has struggled at times this season.

“Jeremy is one of those guys that has been playing really good for our team,” Altuve said. “He’s taking really good at-bats. He’s very explosive and dynamic on the bases, so when he gets on base a lot of things can happen. Maybe I can bunt him over so Yordan [Alvarez] can drive him in.”

Altuve is a nine-time All-Star. The 2017 AL MVP is hitting .274 with three homers and nine RBIs this season.

Espada said he and Altuve often share different ideas about the team and that they had been talking about this as a possibility for a while before he made the move.

“He’s always looking for ways to get everyone involved and he’s playing left field, comes in, maybe give him a little bit more time to get ready between at-bats, just a lot of things that went into this decision,” Espada said. “He’s been around, he knows himself better than anyone else here, so hopefully this could create some opportunities for everyone here and we can score some runs.”

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Manfred to rule on Rose ban after Trump meeting

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Manfred to rule on Rose ban after Trump meeting

NEW YORK — Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred said he discussed Pete Rose with President Donald Trump at a meeting two weeks ago and he plans to rule on a request to end the sport’s permanent ban of the career hits leader, who died in September.

Speaking Monday at a meeting of the Associated Press Sports Editors, Manfred said he and Trump discussed several issues, including concerns over how immigration policies could impact players from Cuba, Venezuela and other foreign countries.

Manfred is considering a petition to have Rose posthumously removed from MLB’s permanently ineligible list. The petition was filed in January by Jeffrey Lenkov, a Southern California lawyer who represented Rose prior to the 17-time All-Star’s death at age 83.

“I met with President Trump two weeks ago … and one of the topics was Pete Rose, but I’m not going beyond that,” Manfred said. “He’s said what he said publicly. I’m not going beyond that in terms of what the back and forth was.”

Trump posted on social media Feb. 28 that he plans to issue “a complete PARDON of Pete Rose.” Trump posted on Truth Social that Rose “shouldn’t have been gambling on baseball, but only bet on HIS TEAM WINNING.”

It’s unclear what a presidential pardon might include. Trump did not specifically mention a tax case in which Rose pleaded guilty in 1990 to two counts of filing false tax returns and served a five-month prison sentence.

The president said he would sign a pardon for Rose “over the next few weeks” but has not addressed the matter since.

Rose had 4,256 hits and also holds records for games (3,562) and plate appearances (15,890). He was the 1973 National League MVP and played on three World Series winners.

An investigation for MLB by lawyer John M. Dowd found Rose placed numerous bets on the Cincinnati Reds to win from 1985-87 while playing for and managing the team. Rose agreed with MLB on a permanent ban in 1989.

Lenkov is seeking Rose’s reinstatement so that he can be considered for the Hall of Fame. Under a rule adopted by the Hall’s board of directors in 1991, anyone on the permanently ineligible list can’t be considered for election to the Hall. Rose applied for reinstatement in 1997 and met with Commissioner Bud Selig in November 2002, but Selig never ruled on Rose’s request. Manfred in 2015 denied Rose’s application for reinstatement.

Manfred said reinstating Rose now was “a little more complicated than it might appear on the outside” and did not commit to a timeline except that “I want to get it done promptly as soon as we get the work done.”

“I’m not going to give this the pocket veto,” Manfred said. “I will in fact issue a ruling.”

Rose’s reinstatement doesn’t mean he would automatically appear on a Hall of Fame ballot. He would first have to be nominated by the Hall’s Historical Overview Committee, which is picked by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America and approved by the Hall’s board.

Manfred said he has been in regular contact with chairman Jane Forbes Clark.

“I mean, believe me, a lot of Hall of Fame dialogue on this one,” Manfred said.

If reinstated, Rose potentially would be eligible for consideration to be placed on a ballot to be considered by the 16-member Classic Baseball Era committee in December 2027.

Manfred said he doesn’t think baseball’s current ties to legal sports betting should color views on Rose’s case.

“There is and always has been a clear demarcation between what Rob Manfred, ordinary citizen, can do on the one hand, and what someone who has the privilege to play or work in Major League Baseball can do on the other in respect to gambling,” Manfred said. “The fact that the law changed, and we sell data and/or sponsorships, which is essentially all we do, to sports betting enterprises, I don’t think changes that.

“It’s a privilege to play Major League Baseball. As with every privilege, there comes responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is that they not bet on the game.”

Manfred did not go into details on his discussion with Trump over foreign-born players other than to say he expressed worry.

“Given the number of foreign-born players we have, we’re always concerned about ingress and egress,” Manfred said. “We have had dialogue with the administration about this topic. And, you know, they’re very interested in sports. They understand the unique need to be able to go back and forth, and I’m going to leave it at that.”

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Braves activate RHP Anderson, sign OF Rosario

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Braves activate RHP Anderson, sign OF Rosario

It was old faces in familiar places for the Atlanta Braves on Monday after they activated right-hander Ian Anderson to the active roster and signed outfielder Eddie Rosario to a major league contract.

In corresponding moves, outfielder Jarred Kelenic was optioned to Triple-A Gwinnett, while right-hander Davis Daniel was optioned to Triple-A after Sunday’s game.

Both Anderson and Rosario emerged as 2021 postseason heroes in Atlanta as the Braves went on to win the World Series.

Anderson, who was claimed off waivers from the Los Angeles Angels on Sunday, went 4-0 with a 1.26 ERA in eight postseason starts for the Braves over the 2020 and 2021 postseasons.

In the 2021 World Series, Anderson famously pitched five no-hit innings in Game 3 to lead Atlanta to a 2-0 victory over the Houston Astros. The Braves defeated the Astros in six games.

Anderson, who turns 27 Friday, was traded by the Braves to the Angels on March 23 for left-hander Jose Suarez. He struggled badly with his new club, going 0-1 with an 11.57 ERA in seven relief appearances. He allowed 17 hits and seven walks in just 9⅓ innings.

Rosario, 33, signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers in February and played in two games with the club, going 1-for-4. He was designated for assignment and became a free agent when Shohei Ohtani returned from the paternity list just over a week ago.

Rosario was the 2021 National League Championship Series MVP, when he powered the Braves past the Dodgers with three home runs, nine RBIs and a 1.647 OPS in six games.

Over parts of 11 seasons, Rosario is a career .261 hitter with 169 home runs and 583 RBIs in 1,123 games with five different clubs, including five seasons with the Minnesota Twins (2015-20) and four with the Braves (2021-24).

Kelenic, 25, was batting .167 with two home runs in 23 games and is a career .211 hitter with 49 home runs and 156 RBIs in 406 games with the Seattle Mariners (2021-23) and Braves.

Daniel, 27, made his only appearance for the Braves on Sunday with a scoreless inning and has appeared in 10 games (six starts) over the past three seasons with a 4.95 ERA.

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