Is it spring training yet? No — but the championship season is upon us, a finer thing still.

THE MORNING HORSEHIDE HERALD

"Every Score Set Down, No Deed Unsung"

~ Being a Faithful Daily Chronicle of the National Pastime ~

Volume I · No. 55 · Tuesday, the First of September, Two Thousand and Twenty-Six

Reporting 12 contests from the day prior.

The Game of the Day

NINE BASEBALLS LEAVE WRIGLEY, AND AUGUST DEPARTS HOLDING A LEAGUE RECORD: CUBS 17, BREWERS 3

On the month's final evening the North Siders empty their arsenal upon the club they trail: back-to-back blasts before the first inning is out, three homers from Bregman alone — the last struck off a first baseman pressed into pitching — a franchise record nine in all, tied for the second-most any club has managed in a game since 1900, and a sixty-two-homer August that takes the National League's calendar-month record away from the 2023 Braves

Nine baseballs left the premises of Wrigley Field on Monday evening, and the records fell almost too quickly for the compositors to set them. Tyrone Taylor and Nico Hoerner went back to back with two out in the first inning; Alex Bregman struck the third homer in the second and joined Seiya Suzuki for another back-to-back pairing in the fourth; Carson Kelly and Matt Shaw took their turns in a four-run seventh; and Michael Conforto's three-run drive and Bregman's third of the night closed a four-run eighth as the Cubs buried Milwaukee seventeen runs to three. The nine homers are a single-game record in all the franchise's long annals, surpassing the eight-homer days of this very first of July and the Fourth of July a year ago — and only one club since 1900 has ever managed more in a game, the Blue Jays of 1987 having struck ten. The evening's sixty-second homer of August, moreover, carried the month past the 2023 Braves' one-and-sixty for a National League record in any calendar month; only the 2019 Yankees, with four-and-seventy, ever hit more in one.

The individual accounting is scarcely less gaudy. Bregman's three-homer night was his second of this very month — he struck three on the twelfth of August besides — and only Sammy Sosa, in the August of 2001, had ever before given the Cubs two three-homer games in a single calendar month; with Swanson's three on the first of July and Crow-Armstrong's three on Saturday, chronicled in these pages Sunday, the club now owns four individual three-homer games this season, company kept only by the 2001 Brewers, the 1956 Reds, and the 1950 Brooklyns. Crow-Armstrong himself — five homers in the two games previous, as yesterday's number related — was, by the pastime's puckish humor, the one man in the lineup who did not go deep; his fifteen August homers and Bregman's twelve nonetheless make them only the third pair of teammates ever to strike twelve apiece in one month, after Texas's Rodríguez and Palmeiro in the August of 1999 and the Yankee twins Mantle and Maris. "It was a good month, just driving the baseball," said Bregman, a model of understatement. His manager Counsell was likewise unmoved to poetry: "That's great we set a record. And the guys aren't going to stop hitting."

The fine print deserves its reading. Five of the nine were charged to the left-hander Harrison, excused after three innings and two-thirds bearing nine runs; the last three were served by Andrew Vaughn, a first baseman by trade, whose two innings of relief yielded nine hits and seven runs — the position-player's inning being lately epidemic in these pages, though rarely at such cost. Clay Holmes, meanwhile, pitched six shutout innings with eight strikeouts for the victory, his earned-run figure now reading 2.09. "You could kind of feel their energy," the starter said of his hitters. "After a couple series that we lost, you could tell that the position-player group really wanted to come out strong." This was the appointment yesterday's desk note twice made — the Central's first and second meeting at Wrigley with eight games between them — and the opening argument went entirely to the pursuers: the gap stands at seven this morning, six of the seven meetings the schedule has packed into a ten-day span remain to be played, and game two goes at 7:40 this evening, Gasser opposing Boyd.

News Around the League

THE DEALINGS DESK: THE SEPTEMBER BELL RINGS AT EIGHT-AND-TWENTY MEN — ROBERT'S WAIVER PASSAGE ENDS IN BALTIMORE, AND SAN DIEGO SUMMONS ITS CATCHER OF THE FUTURE

The first of September arrives this morning, and with it the expanded rosters — eight-and-twenty men to a club — and a flurry of last-minute commerce beaten in just under the eligibility wire. The passenger this desk set upon the waiver wire in Sunday's number has found his destination: the Orioles claimed Luis Robert Jr. from the Mets, assuming the roughly three millions remaining on his season's wages, and expect the seven-year veteran — batting .288 with six homers since the sixth of August — in the ranks as soon as today. "It wasn't a long time ago where Luis was talked about as one of the best players in the game," said the manager Albernaz. "The talent is there." Having joined the organization before September's first day, Robert is eligible for October's wars, which is rather the point, as the card below explains.

San Diego, meantime, reaches for its dearest jewel: Ethan Salas, the twenty-year-old catcher who has been the Friars' anointed successor behind the plate since his signing, is to be promoted today by the accounts of sources, having batted .326 at the Triple-A garrison since the deadline. Should the young man don the tools of ignorance in a big-league game, he would be the youngest to catch one since Iván Rodríguez in 1991. And the White Sox, of all clubs, went shopping for October outfielders: the South Side nine acquired Tommy Pham from Philadelphia and Jake Cave from Tampa Bay, each for cash considerations, veteran reinforcement for a Central leader whose September is suddenly consequential. The Mets' half of the Robert transaction has its own poetry, of which the Tampa Bay card below sings: the roster spot went to Mark Vientos, restored from the invalid list, who homered the selfsame night.

THE INFIRMARY WARD: RENGIFO'S SEASON ENDS UPON THE SURGEON'S TABLE, WHILE THE CAPTAIN'S RETURN ACQUIRES THE OUTLINE OF A DATE

The cart that carried Luis Rengifo from the field at Tampa Bay on Saturday — this ward recorded it Sunday with foreboding — has delivered its verdict: a torn ligament of the right knee, surgery to come, the season finished. The Padres reveal the loss with their bench already thinned, Sheets having reached the invalid list the same weekend, and the desk above relates the reinforcement summoned in their stead. In brighter wards: the Yankee captain Aaron Judge, traveling west with his club as yesterday's number reported, may at last have a horizon — his manager Boone allowed Monday that activation upon the club's next homestand "is possible," adding, "I'm not going to put a date on it, but I think those things are in play now." The rib has healed; the remaining business is workload, with batting practice against live velocity to come in Anaheim and San Diego. Elsewhere the lists collect their September tolls: Boston places the first baseman Willson Contreras on the ten-day rolls with a strained left hamstring — his replacement Gasper announced himself within hours, as the Fenway card below relates — Miami loses the second baseman Xavier Edwards to a sprained left thumb, and Seattle transfers the young shortstop Colt Emerson to the sixty-day list for repair of a wrist tendon, a dispiriting coda to a dispiriting Seattle evening.

THE DEBUT DESK: JENKINS'S FIRST HOMER ARRIVES AT SEVEN-AND-THIRTY MILES TO THE HOUR — STRUCK, TO HIS LASTING AMUSEMENT, OFF A FELLOW OUTFIELDER

The Herald has attended Walker Jenkins daily since his summons — the first hit Friday, the first run batted in Saturday — and Monday brought the first homer, though the pastime insisted on its joke. With Minnesota leading Detroit by eight in the eighth, the Tigers handed the ball to the utility man McKinstry, whose offerings travel under forty miles to the hour, and the Twins' prized rookie found himself more frightened than he had been against any fastball. "Dude. Don't strike out," Jenkins recalled thinking. "I was more nervous for that than my normal at-bats, without a doubt. But I've legit had coaches tell me if you face a guy like that, try to hit it off the foul pole. It worked out." The 37.4-mile eephus departed 388 feet by the trackers' measure, high off the right-field pole, and the young man returned to center field laughing beneath a Target Field ovation. His teammate Clemens supplied the veteran's benediction: "Down the road, no one is going to remember, oh, he got to 20 because he hit the one off the position player. It's a home run in the books and on the stat sheet. You get it out of the way." The desk concurs, and notes for the almanac that the victim was a fellow outfielder by trade — the full eleven-to-one accounting stands in the card below.

THE AIRWAVES DESK: A BOSTON VOICE APOLOGIZES FOR SUNDAY'S BROADCAST, AND CHISHOLM DECLINES TO LEARN HIS NAME

The ancient rivalry found a new theater Monday: the radio booth. Will Flemming, the Red Sox play-by-play man, apologized publicly for his commentary during Sunday's sixteen-to-one Yankee rout — the very game whose stolen bases these pages tallied yesterday — in which he had suggested Boston's pitcher ought to "drill" the batter Wells and "fight" Jazz Chisholm Jr., whose thefts of second and third with a six-run lead had offended him. "My comments during yesterday's broadcast crossed a line," Flemming wrote. "I'm emotional and a fan at heart, and that bled into the broadcast." The Yankee manager Boone accepted the apology — "water under the bridge" — while taking pains to claim the larceny as his own commission: "I want to make sure it was important to know that this came from me," he said, Boston having declined to hold the runner. As for Chisholm, he achieved the perfect deadpan of the age: "I didn't even know who that was until this morning, and I'm still not going to remember who he is after today." The Herald, which holds that a man who steals his fortieth base in August is doing his employer's business whatever the score, files the correspondence without further comment.

THE RECONCILIATION DESK: MARTE STANDS BEFORE HIS TEAMMATES AT LAST — 'IN THAT INSTANCE, I FAILED HIM'

The public accounting that yesterday's number reported his manager hoping for arrived Monday in Phoenix. Ketel Marte, restored to the Arizona ranks exactly two weeks after he failed to appear for a game at Fenway Park, spoke publicly of the absence for the first time — "It was a moment of frustration. No one made the decision for me, I'm the one that made the decision not to show up" — and of the manager Lovullo, whose relationship with him has been likened to father and son: "In that instance, I failed him by not showing up. That's what I regret." He then went, by his own declaration, to address the clubhouse entire: "I'm going to stand in front of my teammates like a man." Lovullo, who spoke for near twenty minutes in his second baseman's defense, held to his conviction that the apology could be a springboard: "I told him, 'This could galvanize this team. It will bring everybody closer. I promise you.'" The evening's baseball was less forgiving — the wires report the returning man was greeted with boos from his own grandstand, and his one-for-three with a walk could not prevent the defeat the card below records, one that costs the Snakes ground they can ill spare.

The Rest of the Card

THE RETURNING HEROES WRITE THE ENDING THEMSELVES: RED SOX 9, MARINERS 8, IN TEN INNINGS

The restoration this paper recorded only yesterday morning required just one Fenway evening to pay its dividend. Down eight runs to five with four outs remaining, the Bostons drew close on Trevor Story's two-run double off the Monster in the eighth; in the ninth, Roman Anthony led off with a screamer that the center fielder Rodríguez — allowed 2.9 seconds' deliberation, by the trackers' cruel arithmetic — gambled on and missed, a single become a triple, and Rafaela's sacrifice fly brought him sliding home around Raleigh's tag to level it. The tenth supplied the coronation: two intentional passes filled the bases so that Story, in his second game back from three and a half months' exile, could line the walk-off single at 105.6 miles to the hour. "We've been watching from afar for a while," said Story amid the water buckets. "Here we are. It's very fun." The losing cause was crowded with valor — Arozarena finished a triple shy of the cycle with four driven in, Raleigh struck his twentieth — and with misfortune besides: the loss fell to Criswell, activated from the sixty-day list that very afternoon, while Boston's first run had come off the bat of Gasper, recalled that very afternoon for the injured Contreras, as the ward relates. The M's have dropped five running; the Bostons, five and a half clear in the wild-card row, hold a fresh conviction that the cavalry has arrived.

COWSER GOES OVER THE WALL AT THE STROKE OF MIDNIGHT, AND .500 IS RESTORED TO BALTIMORE: BIRDS 2, ROX 1

Two out in the Denver ninth, a runner at second, and Jake McCarthy's drive at 102.9 miles to the hour bound for the seats — a walk-off homer in every particular save the last: Colton Cowser, playing shallow by his own confession in that cavernous outfield, put his head down, ran, timed the leap, and came down over the wall with the ball and the ballgame, crashing backside-first into the fence and rising with a roar. "It's the best play I've ever seen," ruled the manager Albernaz, whose fuller dugout commentary, he conceded, could not be rendered in print. "By the grace of God, we came down with it," said the author, who already owned walk-off homers on consecutive May days and now owns the rarer inverse — "a walk-off on the road," by his accounting. The game preceding the miracle was tidy work: Povich, recalled that afternoon, gave five innings of one run, Basallo doubled home the equalizer in the fifth, and the go-ahead run crossed in the seventh upon an overturned challenge, Wolfram taking the win and Kittredge the save. At nine-and-sixty wins against the same in defeats, Baltimore stands level for the first time since the thirtieth of April — eight victories in ten games, half a game from Cleveland's final chair, and the claimed Robert arriving today, as the dealings desk relates. The pursuit is general and the quarry is in sight.

STOCK WAITS SEVEN YEARS BETWEEN VICTORIES, AND VIENTOS RETURNS WITH THUNDER: AMAZINS 3, RAYS 2

The best record in the American League was beaten Monday by a six-and-thirty-year-old making the ninth start of his life and a slugger activated that very afternoon. Robert Stock gave the Amazins five and a third scoreless innings, a career high, for his third major-league victory and his first since the fifth of April, 2019 — and the researchers at Elias certify the curiosity: he is but the fourth pitcher ever to wait seven calendar years or more between wins with both arriving under the same manager, Andy Green having captained his San Diego victory then and his New York one now. Mark Vientos, restored from a fractured hand to the cleanup spot, launched a 418-foot blast to the Trop's deepest quarter — "Thank you, God, for this amazing moment," he said of his tour of the bases — and Christopher Morel, an outfielder by necessity, twice saved the evening, spearing Aranda's bases-loaded liner in the fifth and throwing out the fleet Simpson at second in the sixth. Tampa Bay's eighth-inning rally fell a run shy, Senga sealed the fifth save of his new trade, and the Sunday sweep's momentum dies at four straight: the Rays, at two-and-eighty wins, keep the American's best ledger and a four-and-a-half-game lead, but the evening belonged to the visitors.

THE STREAK DIES AT SEVEN AS THE BAY NINE STRIKE THRICE: GIANTS 7, ATLANTAS 3

Atlanta's seven-game procession, sung in these pages through the weekend, was halted by an opponent five-and-twenty games their inferior in the tables. Rafael Devers opened the evening with his thirtieth homer, and after Harris's three-and-twentieth briefly gave the home nine the lead, the sixth inning undid them: Basabe tied the account with his fourth homer, Hill's pinch two-run double took the lead, and Eldridge singled home another before Jonah Cox — whose fifth-inning bunt single had cashed a run already — closed the accounts with a ninth-inning blast. Molina pitched five innings for the victory; Elder bore the loss. The defeat, paired with Philadelphia's desert victory below, trims the East to four games — and costs Atlanta dearer coin still in the bye race, where the idle champions now lead by half a game. The clubs reconvene in Washington this evening at 6:45.

STOTT STRIKES THE LONGEST BLOW OF HIS LIFE, AND AUGUST CLOSES AT TWENTY-ONE AND SEVEN: PHILS 2, SNAKES 1

Bryson Stott met a second-inning offering and drove it 464 feet by the trackers' certificate — the longest homer of his major-league life by a wide margin, so plainly gone that the right fielder Carroll never moved. "I think that was the first time I had that happen," the author marveled. Harper's run-scoring double off the center-field wall in the third — his on-base streak now three-and-thirty games — supplied the second run, and Nola made the two stand with five-plus innings of one, his earned-run figure dipping below five for the first time since April; when he left two aboard with none out in the sixth, the rookie McFarlane retired three straight, a three-and-two sweeper past Arenado the jewel. Duran sealed his nine-and-twentieth save. The ledger closes on an August of one-and-twenty victories against seven defeats, among the ten best months in all the franchise's history by winning fraction — five straight now, and a share of the wild-card's top chair with Chicago at eight-and-seventy wins apiece. Arizona's evening, and Marte's harder homecoming, are the reconciliation desk's business above; the Snakes slip half a game from the final chair.

KING THROWS SIX CLEAN, FIFTEEN HITS FOLLOW, AND THE PAGE IS TURNED: FRIARS 5, CINCINNATIS 0

Swept out of Tampa Bay in the fashion Sunday's number chronicled, San Diego administered the antidote directly: Michael King fired six scoreless innings, Hart and Peralta finished the whitewash, and the attack strung fifteen hits — four runs in the fourth upon Merrill's single, Bogaerts's two-run double, and Harris's knock, with France cashing Tatis in the seventh. Singer absorbed his thirteenth defeat for the home nine, held to five hits entire. The evening carried one sobering interlude: the home-plate umpire Manny Gonzalez left the game before the fifth inning with heat exhaustion, and the Herald wishes the arbiter a swift recovery. The Friars hold the National's third chair by half a game this morning, and tonight the summons the dealings desk describes comes due — Salas, the catcher of the future, expected in uniform at 6:40 in Cincinnati.

LILE ANSWERS HIS LAUREL WITH TWO MORE BLASTS: NATS 6, MARLINS 3

Named the National's Player of the Week in the morning, Daylen Lile spent the evening defending the citation: a two-run homer the opposite way in the fifth — the first of his life to leave by that door — and a go-ahead two-run drive in the seventh that struck the club's 2019 championship plaque in right field, three-for-three with four driven in altogether, his nineteenth and twentieth of the season. "Just to come through for the team felt really good," said the three-and-twenty-year-old, whose late-summer surge now mirrors the September that made his rookie name. Miami had built its lead on three fourth-inning runs, Stowers's two-run single the freight, and the four-run seventh that answered was fattened by an errant Ruiz throw and House's single. The rookie Tolman, handed a bases-filled, none-out eighth, escaped it whole and struck out the side in the ninth for the first save of his life — "I'm still jittery right now," he confessed after. Washington takes the series; the Miami men, four games from the last chair and now without Edwards, as the ward records, proceed to Kansas City.

JEFFERS STRIKES TWO, THE ROOKIES JOIN IN, AND DETROIT IS ROUTED: TWINS 11, TIGERS 1

Minnesota's evening ran to eleven runs upon nine hits, the catcher Jeffers supplying two homers — a three-run drive in the fifth and a solo in the seventh — while Clemens added his three-and-twentieth beside an early sacrifice fly, Brooks Lee singled home three in the sixth, and the rookie Jenkins closed the scoring with the homer the debut desk celebrates above. Bradley carried the ball seven innings of one run with nine strikeouts for his tenth victory; Jobe bore the loss, and Lee's — Hao-Yu Lee's — solo homer was Detroit's whole account. Two straight now for the Twins, who have found some September appetite; the Tigers have dropped eight of ten, and the same clubs go again at 7:40 this evening.

DEGROM FACES THE MINIMUM THROUGH SEVEN, AND THE FRUSTRATION IS AVENGED: RANGERS 8, ATHLETICS 1

Five days after the worst start of his long life — eight runs on the South Side, an evening he called "really bad" without contest — Jacob deGrom pitched as if to erase it from the ledger by force: seven innings, one hit, eight strikeouts, not a walk, the lone Butler single in the second erased at once by the double play, the minimum one-and-twenty men faced. He is the first Ranger to face the minimum through seven since Gray in 2023, and had not done it himself since 2015, when the uniform read Mets. "When you have a competitor like Jacob who is pretty upset at the previous start," said the manager Schumaker, "you knew he was going to come in on the attack." Foscue homered his tenth, Freeman and Nimmo drove in two apiece, and the freshly recalled Ahlstrom and Peoples finished the eight-to-one business. Two straight for Texas, two games from Houston's crown and a game and a half from the wild-card row; the A's managed three hits and a ninth-inning sacrifice fly.

THE MEETING OF LEADERS GOES TO THE HOME NINE: ASTROS 6, PALE HOSE 3

The season's first September collision of division leaders went to Houston, which answered a brief two-to-one deficit with Velázquez's two-run homer in the fourth and pulled clear on a three-run fifth — Walker's bases-loaded walk and Cam Smith's two-run double the instruments. Chicago's account was Meidroth's single, Murakami's bases-filled walk, and Colson Montgomery's homer in the seventh, which keeps the shortstop level with his clubmates Murakami and Vargas at nine-and-twenty homers apiece. De Los Santos took the win in relief of Lambert, Abreu sealed the eighth save, and Kay bore the loss. Houston's crown in the West stands two games over Texas; the Pale Hose, their Central lead trimmed to three over idle Cleveland, greet their new outfielders Pham and Cave — the dealings desk has the particulars — and try again at 8:10 this evening.

THREE ERRORS, A PICKOFF GONE ASTRAY, AND THE SLIDE ENDS AT SEVEN: HALOS 10, HIGHLANDERS 1

The evening after their sixteen-run Bronx festival, the Highlanders arrived in Anaheim and left their gloves at the hotel: three errors, a pickoff throw that donated a run outright, and a ten-to-one drubbing that ends the Halos' seven-game slide. Ureña pitched seven innings of one run with eight strikeouts, Grissom collected three hits among his four runs batted in, the rookie Moore added two knocks and two runs driven home, and the ageless Trout singled home two in the decisive fourth. New York's whole account was Spencer Jones's eighth homer; the loss fell to Rodríguez. The defeat costs the Yankees nothing in the tables they cannot recover — the top wild-card chair remains theirs by three over Boston, the East deficit four and a half — but the manner of it will not hang in the Louvre. The clubs resume at 9:38 this evening, Cole opposing Rodriguez, with the traveling captain's horizon the ward's happier business above.

September's first tables, surveyed once around. In the American: Tampa Bay holds the East by four and a half over New York, with Boston seven and a half astern; the White Sox keep the Central by three over Cleveland; Houston's crown in the West is two games wide over Texas; and the wild-card row reads New York, Boston, and Cleveland's last chair by half a game over Baltimore — level at .500 and coming with intent, as the card relates — with Texas and Toronto a game and a half back. In the National: Atlanta's lead in the East is trimmed to four over surging Philadelphia; Milwaukee's Central lead is cut to seven by the Wrigley bombardment above; Los Angeles holds the West by nine and a half over San Diego — and mark the second bye, where the champions, idle Monday, now lead Atlanta by half a game after two mornings of dead heat. The wild-card row reads Chicago and Philadelphia sharing the top chairs at eight-and-seventy wins, San Diego's last seat half a game over Arizona, Miami four back, and St. Louis five. The rosters stand at eight-and-twenty men from this morning, and the season's final day — the seven-and-twentieth of this month — is at last the same page of the calendar. Tonight's card runs to fifteen engagements, all verified against the schedule, and the desk directs the reader's eye to four: at 6:40 in Cincinnati, the summons of the dealings desk comes due, Salas expected in San Diego flannels; at 6:40 in Pittsburgh, Webb opposes Skenes in as handsome a pitching card as the month will offer; at 6:40 in Cleveland, Toronto opens a set that bears directly upon the American's last chair; and at 7:40 the Wrigley argument resumes, Gasser opposing Boyd, with the Suds men's lead at seven and six meetings left inside ten days. The champions, for their part, open against St. Louis at 10:10 expecting their catcher Smith restored, as yesterday's number appointed. Until the morrow's dispatch, keep your scorecards near and your enthusiasms nearer.

~ THE HERALD ~

The Herald Acknowledges Its Debts