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. 62 · Tuesday, the Eighth of September, Two Thousand and Twenty-Six

Reporting 11 contests from the day prior.

The Game of the Day

ONE HOUR AND FIFTY-ONE MINUTES OF PERFECT QUIET ANSWER THREE DAYS OF THUNDER — LUZARDO PERMITS TWO HITS, STRIKES OUT TWELVE, AND FINISHES WHAT HE STARTS: PHILLIES 1, BRAVES 0

The first complete game of Jesús Luzardo's life is a two-hit whitewashing of Atlanta in the shortest nine-inning engagement Philadelphia has played in seven-and-thirty years — and the game's entire scoring is Kyle Schwarber's eighth-inning moonshot, his three-and-fortieth of the season and the fifth 1-0 homer of his career, drawing him level with Ted Williams atop that curious ledger

The clocks tell the story before the scorers do: one hour and fifty-one minutes, first pitch to last, the briefest nine innings played in Philadelphia since a Fourth of July at Veterans Stadium in 1989. After three days of theatre in this series — Saturday's 450-foot promenade and the full-count strikeout that answered it, Sunday's game-tying thunder and uninvited curtain call, all faithfully set down in these columns — the fourth act was conducted in something close to silence, and Jesús Luzardo was its author. The left-hander they call Zeus, fresh from the National's Pitcher of the Month laurels for August, permitted two hits and a single walk, struck out twelve, and required but 109 pitches to record the first complete game of his major-league life — the first Philadelphia shutout of two hits or fewer since Lorenzen's no-hitter in the August of 2023. "I like pitching fast and I like fast games," the pitcher explained, as though describing a preference in neckties.

The particulars deserve their line in the ledger. Luzardo ended an eleven-pitch first inning by throwing a fastball past Albies at 98.1 miles to the hour; he gathered 23 swings-and-misses, the most by any Phillie this season; and six of his twelve strikeouts came on the sweeper, a pitch that has now collected 132 victims this year — second in all baseball among strikeouts on any single offering, behind only the four-seamer of Milwaukee's Misiorowski. "That's about as good as it gets," conceded the beaten manager Weiss. Yet through seven innings the masterpiece stood in danger of going unpaid, Holmes and the Atlanta staff matching zeros — until Kyle Schwarber found a Fuentes offering left middle in the eighth and did not miss it. The blast was his three-and-fortieth, the majors' leading count, and the fifth homer of his career struck in a game decided 1-0 — a figure that draws him level, by the certification of the Elias Bureau, with one Theodore Williams for the most in the annals. "It's not thinking slug," Schwarber shrugged. "It's just trying to find a way on."

There remained one appointment the crowd would not have missed. Ronald Acuña Jr., thrice this series the tormentor of the Citizens Bank faithful, stood in with one out in the ninth against a starter still throwing 97.9 — the hardest ninth-inning pitch from a Phillies starter since Wheeler in 2021 — and this time the argument ended in a walk, Luzardo fanning Baldwin behind him and retiring Albies on a first-pitch changeup to close the accounts. "Zeus has been crazy for a while now," ruled the interim manager Mattingly, and the arithmetic bears him out: eleven wins against two defeats and a 1.93 figure since the fourteenth of May. The freight of the verdict runs thus: the four-game set is split, Atlanta's lead in the East holds at four games with eighteen to play, and the Phillies climb into the wild card's first chair by half a game over the beaten Cubs, whose own Monday misfortune the card below relates. The season's series between these two clubs is closed at seven games to two for Atlanta; the season itself, the desk suspects, is not done with either of them.

News Around the League

THE RESTORATION DESK, TRIUMPHANT: THE CAPTAIN IS ACTIVATED AT LAST — JUDGE COMES OFF THE INVALID LIST AND IS EXPECTED IN RIGHT FIELD THIS VERY EVENING

The file this desk has carried since the last day of May was stamped closed late Monday: the Yankees reinstated Aaron Judge from the sixty-day invalid list, and the captain is expected in the lineup this evening when New York opens its homestand against Colorado — precisely the return these pages forecast, box by checked box, through a summer of cage sessions and cautious bulletins. The great man faced live pitching at the Stadium Monday on the club's idle day, the final examination, and the paperwork followed by nightfall. The rib he fractured chasing a pop fly in Houston on the six-and-twentieth of April has cost him and his club dearly by every measure: New York stood 36-23 when he last played and has gone 45-39 since, its offense ranking six-and-twentieth in runs over the absence. "I wanted to be back June 1, but that didn't happen," Judge said. "I'll leave it up to the manager when he wants to put me in there."

The terms of the return carry two details the reader should bank. First, there was no minor-league errand and will be none — "I don't see a point. Why waste at-bats?" was the captain's whole argument, and it prevailed. Second, he returns not as a mere designated hitter but as the starting right fielder, the manager Boone allowing that early appearances may run five to seven innings while the stamina rebuilds. "We certainly look forward to getting our guy back," said Boone, in the register of a man understating on purpose. The desk notes the timing is no small thing: the wild-card row's first chair is held in comfort, but October is not played on seedings alone, and the pennant arithmetic of the Bronx has waited fourteen weeks for its largest number.

THE TWO-WAY QUESTION IS ANSWERED FOR THE YEAR: OHTANI WILL NOT PITCH AGAIN IN 2026, AND SAYS SO HIMSELF

The arithmetic his manager invited the public to perform on Sunday — "I think we can all do the math," as these columns recorded — was confirmed Monday night by the one man entitled to state it plainly. Shohei Ohtani, speaking to the press for the first time in three weeks after his return to the Dodger lineup, was asked whether he expects to take the mound again this season: "Most likely, no. I'm going to be focusing on hitting moving forward." The great one went 0-for-3 with a walk in the champions' victory over Cincinnati, sung in the card below, after four games' rest for the catalogue of ailments this ward has tracked — the left knee, the right biceps — and the club judged the evening a success on physical grounds alone. "There was nothing alarming from the at-bats," said the manager Roberts. "To take four days off, to come out of it feeling good, I think that's a win in itself."

The figures explain the surrender. Since Ohtani began his throwing program on the eighth of August, the bat has run to .198 with four-and-thirty strikeouts — the buildup on the mound visibly taxing the work at the plate — and he has not pitched in a game since the third of July. What remains for 2026 is still formidable: a .902 season's OPS, thirty homers, and a 1.79 figure across fourteen starts already banked, with a lineup to anchor through what the club intends as a third consecutive October triumph. "Disappointing," the man allowed, "but I want to make sure that I used this as a learning experience... and use that as something to improve upon for next season." The two-way show is adjourned to 2027; the hitter, the Dodgers wager, is about to be the better for it.

THE FORTY-AND-FORTY WATCH, DAY THE SECOND: CROW-ARMSTRONG STRIKES HIS ONE-AND-FORTIETH AND STEALS TWO MORE, AND THE LEDGER NOW READS FIVE THEFTS IN EIGHTEEN GAMES

The watch this desk opened only yesterday is already paying dividends. Pete Crow-Armstrong, in a losing Milwaukee afternoon the card below relates, struck his one-and-fortieth homer of the season — turning around a 99.6-mile fastball from the closer Megill, who had not surrendered a homer in five-and-fifty appearances this year — and swiped second base twice besides, running his season's thefts to five-and-thirty. The grand pursuit thus stands at five stolen bases wanted in seventeen games remaining, and the company he now keeps tells the scale of the thing: with the day's work he joins a register — forty homers and five-and-thirty steals in one season — that previously read only Soto, Ohtani, Acuña twice, Soriano, Rodriguez, Bonds twice, and Canseco. Should the last five bags fall, he becomes the seventh man in the history of the two leagues to reach forty and forty — and the first Cub.

The testimony of the enemy is the best measure of him. "He's the best offensive player in the game this year, no question about it," said the Brewers' manager Murphy, whose club has held the center fielder to a .108 figure across their meetings and won the season's series regardless. "Throw in his defense and his baserunning — I don't know of a better player." The desk observes that the man Murphy is describing is the front-runner for the National's Most Valuable laurels, and that the last name on the forty-and-forty register at four-and-twenty years of age or younger — Acuña, as this paper noted Monday — spent his own weekend conducting theatre in Philadelphia. The pastime does love a rhyme.

THE MINOR-LEAGUE MARVEL: A TWO-AND-THIRTY-YEAR-OLD JOURNEYMAN THROWS THE FIRST PERFECT GAME THE MINORS HAVE SEEN FROM ONE MAN'S HAND SINCE 2017

The pastime reserved Monday's purest page for its lower rungs. Thomas Pannone, a left-hander of two-and-thirty years in the employ of Triple-A Nashville, retired all seven-and-twenty Durham men he faced in a 3-0 victory — eight strikeouts, four-and-ninety pitches, one-and-sixty of them strikes — the first perfect game thrown by a single pitcher anywhere in the minor leagues since 2017, and but the fifth in the International League's annals, a register that opens in 1884 and reads Carmichael 1910, Ohka 2000, Arroyo 2003, Germano 2011, and now Pannone 2026. It is the third perfecto in the history of the Nashville club, and the roll of witnesses to such things is short everywhere: the majors themselves have seen only four-and-twenty, none since Germán in 2023.

The résumé makes the poetry. Pannone was drafted by Cleveland in 2013, debuted for Toronto in 2018, and has since carried his glove through the Angels', Red Sox', Cubs', and Yankees' systems, two seasons in Korea, and a 2025 lost entire to a torn flexor tendon in the pitching forearm. Milwaukee signed him to a minor-league paper in the November of 2024; in late July he made his first major-league start in seven years; and on Monday night in Durham he was, for one evening, flawless. The Herald has sung débutantes and milestone men all week, and doffs its cap now to the other career arc — the man who kept showing up for a decade until the game handed him its rarest jewel.

THE INFIRMARY WARD: GRISHAM'S HAMSTRING MAY BE A SEASON-ENDER, THE DESERT EXPECTS ITS CAVALRY WITHIN THE WEEK, AND THE WEEKEND'S FILES ADVANCE

The ward's gravest new entry belongs to New York: further testing on Trent Grisham's right hamstring, the strain that shelved him Friday in San Diego, returned a Grade 2 verdict, and the wires allow that it could keep the outfielder out for the remainder of the regular campaign — a hard sentence for a club otherwise celebrating in the restoration columns above. In Chicago, Ian Happ's balky left knee — the late scratch this ward flagged yesterday — was due before the examiners Monday, with no verdict yet published; Kansas City's Jac Caglianone is confirmed with a Grade 1 flexor strain in the left elbow and stands down from throwing some days; and Cleveland's Chase DeLauter remains day-to-day with the sprained wrist, out of the lineup again Monday.

The brighter pages belong to the mending. Arizona expects a cavalry within the week: Corbin Burnes, whose rehabilitation these pages noted Sunday, is expected on a major-league mound this very night in Kansas City — his first appearance since the surgeon's table claimed his 2025 — with Gallen and Soroka both slated to be activated before the series there concludes. Boston's Tanner Houck begins a rehabilitation assignment today at Double-A Portland, clubmate Crochet having already returned to a mound Friday; and the champions' bullpen ranks stand to swell besides, Edwin Díaz working rehabilitation innings at Oklahoma City and Sasaki, the wires report, possibly back shortly after he becomes eligible on the eleventh. Milwaukee, amid its winning, committed the reliever Grant Anderson to the fifteen-day list with biceps trouble. Swift knitting to every name above, and the desk directs the reader to the restoration columns for the morning's two grandest discharges.

The Rest of the Card

MAYO STRIKES TWO, ROGERS RETIRES SIXTEEN STRAIGHT, AND A SIX-GAME SKID DIES AT THE HARBOR: ORIOLES 6, FOREST CITY NINE 4

Baltimore's week-long famine — the six-game skid these pages have counted morning by morning, but twelve runs scored in the lot of it — ended the moment the schedule delivered the very club it is chasing. Coby Mayo struck a 426-foot solo blast off the left-hander Cantillo in the third, his major-league-leading sixteenth homer against southpaws, and answered Cleveland's lone rally with a two-run copy in the sixth — his one-and-twentieth, and the first two-homer game of his 218-game career — while Trevor Rogers carried a season-high seven and a third innings of one-run ball, retiring sixteen straight after the game's first batter singled. The visitors' evening was seven walks conceded inside three innings, two of them forcing in runs with the bases full, and their answer arrived too late: Nathaniel Lowe's three-run pinch blast in the ninth, his sixteenth, merely made honest work of Walker's first career save. The freight is the morning's tightest: Cleveland's hold on the American's last chair thins to a single game over Toronto — beaten by midnight in the West, as the card below relates — while the Orioles, three games back of the chair with the season's series against Cleveland standing 3-2 to the Guardians, have two more evenings at Camden Yards to make their long arithmetic move. "Our backs are up against the wall," said Rogers, "but it feels like it's been like that for the majority of the year, and that's when we play our best baseball."

NINE SCORELESS INNINGS FROM A BULLPEN COMMITTEE, FIVE RUNS IN THE TENTH, AND FOUR GIVEN BACK BEFORE THE DOOR HELD: DESERT NINE 5, KANSAS CITY NINE 4, IN TEN INNINGS

Arizona arrived at Kauffman Stadium with no starting pitcher at all and a bullpen worn thin from Houston, and produced the season's strangest scorecard: nothing-to-nothing through nine full innings, then nine runs between the clubs in the tenth — only the third game since 1969, the wires certify, to be scoreless through nine and finish with four or more runs on each side. Law opened with two spotless frames and four relievers followed with seven more, while Kansas City's Cameron gave six innings without permitting a runner to second base. The tenth broke the dam entire: Nootbaar's sacrifice fly, Geraldo Perdomo's two-run single behind an outfield error, and run-scoring knocks from Moreno and Nolan Arenado stacked five runs off the ancient Kimbrel — whereupon Salvador Perez's three-run double brought the home nine within one and Dennis Santana, unused in eight days, entered to record the last two outs. "That tells me a story," said the manager Lovullo of his closer's readiness. "It tells me what he has been doing when nobody is watching." The Desert nine have won three running, stand eleven games over level since the ninth of July, and hold the National's last chair by half a game over San Diego — with the restoration columns above promising Burnes to this very mound tonight.

THE EIGHTH INNING UNDOES SEVEN INNINGS OF BOYD'S FINE WORK, AND THE SEASON'S SERIES IS BANKED IN BEER TOWN: SUDS MEN 4, CUBS 3

For seven innings Matthew Boyd gave Chicago precisely the game it required — the minimum faced in five separate frames, seven strikeouts, a 2-1 lead built on Pedro Ramírez's fifth homer and Bregman's go-ahead single — and the eighth took it all back. A leadoff walk and Ortiz's double chased the starter; Jackson Chourio lined a two-run single to right off the reliever Zeferjahn to turn the ledger; and Christian Yelich's bases-loaded sacrifice fly supplied the insurance the ninth would prove to require, for Crow-Armstrong's one-and-fortieth — sung at proper length in the milestone columns above — drew the visitors back within one before Megill closed the door on his seven-and-twentieth save. The verdict banks the season's series for Milwaukee at seven games to four, stretches the Central's lead to eight full games, and drops the Cubs half a game behind Philadelphia in the wild-card row's first chair — three consequences from one inning's work. The clubs go again this evening, and the desk notes the home nine sends its ace: Misiorowski, he of the fourteen victories and the National's best 1.97, against Peterson.

GREENE AGAIN, A SLAMMED GLOVE, AND A NINTH-INNING DRIVE THAT DIES IN THE GRAVEYARD OF CENTER FIELD: DETROITS 5, TWINS 4

Riley Greene, whose four-visit massacre in Cleveland these pages sang on Sunday, kept right on: a two-run blast in the fifth, his nineteenth, stood as the winning margin in a game Detroit needed badly after three walk-off wounds in one weekend. The rookie Kevin McGonigle opened the scoring with his fifteenth homer — struck off Joe Ryan, whose own return from a month's invalidism ran to four innings, seven strikeouts, and honest rust — and the young starter Melton carried the win while betraying, for once, a pulse: handed a two-run double by the rookie Jenkins in the sixth, he sat down and slammed his glove against the bench. "The game is won and lost on margins like that," he explained. The margins held. In the ninth, Jeffers took Jansen's cutter to the deepest country of Comerica Park with the tying run aboard, and center fielder Max Clark — alone in the yard unalarmed — gathered it in. "That area was a graveyard today," the young man shrugged, while the beaten manager Shelton mourned the geography: "Because that ball is straight flushed on. But it's the biggest ballpark in baseball in center field, and doesn't get out." Jansen's eighteenth save closed it; the Twins have dropped two running.

PIVETTA RETURNS FROM FIVE MONTHS' EXILE WITH FIVE SPOTLESS INNINGS, AND THE FRIARS KEEP THE PRESSURE AT HALF A GAME: FRIARS 3, NATIONALS 2

The return these pages flagged on Sunday as due "within days" arrived precisely on schedule. Nick Pivetta, absent since April with the flexor strain, was activated from the sixty-day list and gave San Diego five scoreless innings on three-and-sixty pitches — the first six men retired in order, eight of the last nine put away, and the whole afternoon conducted with but a single swing-and-miss. "He picked up from where he left off — dominant Nick," ruled the manager Stammen. The scoring was patient work: run-scoring singles from Jackson Merrill — who had already robbed Ortiz of extra bases with a leaping first-inning grab — and Machado built the lead, Merrill adding a second knock, and Dylan Crews's two-run blast in the sixth, his eleventh, accounted for Washington's whole reply before Miller sealed his four-and-thirtieth save. The Nats have now dropped five running; the Friars, twice winners running, stay half a game behind Arizona for the National's last chair with a rotation suddenly deep enough to argue over — Pivetta may take three more turns before the season's final page, and October, if it comes, would find him built up for more.

ELEVEN INNINGS, TWO BLOWN LEADS APIECE, AND A SQUIBBLER UP THE LEFT SIDE SETTLES IT ALL: GIANTS 5, MOUND CITY NINE 4, IN ELEVEN INNINGS

The evening at Oracle Park was a study in refusing to lose. St. Louis tied it in the ninth on Fermín's bases-loaded sacrifice fly, went ahead in the tenth on the rookie Bernal's bloop, and was answered at once: the Mound City nine passed Rafael Devers with first base open, and Bryce Eldridge — "Rafi gives me more confidence," the young giant testified. "If they intentionally walk him, he looks at me and he's pumping me up" — lined the tying single to center. In the eleventh, Shay Whitcomb bounced an infield single to the left side to end it. Devers's own night deserves the flourish: two more doubles, six-and-thirty now, making him the first Giant to pair five-and-thirty doubles with five-and-thirty homers in a season since Jeff Kent in 2002 — the hot streak these pages sang Sunday having settled into something like a permanent condition. Alec Burleson's two-and-twentieth homer carried his runs-driven count to one hundred four, second in the National only to Cincinnati's Stewart at one hundred seven; it went for naught, the Cardinals slipping a game under level and five from the last chair, while the Giants — long past table arithmetic — simply played September's most stubborn game and won it.

RECALLED AT NOON, TEN STRIKEOUTS BY NIGHTFALL — SHEEHAN RECLAIMS HIS ROTATION POST AS THE CHAMPIONS WIN A FIFTH STRAIGHT: DODGERS 6, CINCINNATIS 3

The bill this paper advertised as the night's crown jewel — Burns and his fifteen victories against the champions — was altered by design: the young ace worked but three hitless innings before Cincinnati handed the game to Williamson, a piggyback by arrangement, and the arrangement collapsed in the middle innings. Emmet Sheehan, recalled from Oklahoma City that very morning, struck out ten across five and two-thirds innings of one-run ball — a first-inning blast from De La Cruz, the game's second batter and his four-and-twentieth, the only blemish before fourteen straight Reds went down — and the manager Roberts pronounced the rotation post his to keep. The champions managed but three hits and won comfortably anyway: two runs crossing on a Hayes throwing error in the fifth, Teoscar Hernández's three-run blast in the sixth, his thirteenth, and Smith's pinch sacrifice fly closing the accounts while Suárez's two-and-twentieth homer led the visitors' reply. The great Ohtani's return to the order — hitless, walking once, and pronounced sound — commands its own column above. Five straight victories now for Los Angeles, the West held at ten and a half; the clubs meet again at 10:10 tonight, Skubal taking the hill against Lodolo.

GIMÉNEZ LEVELS IT IN THE NINTH, THE ELEPHANTS ANSWER BY WALK-OFF, AND TORONTO SLIPS BACK BELOW ITS WATERLINE: WHITE ELEPHANTS 6, TORONTOS 5

Toronto's evening in the West was a slow climb and a swift fall. Down 5-1 by the fifth — Henry Bolte's ninth homer the crown of a night that ran to three walks, three stolen bases, and three runs scored besides — the visitors clawed back by installments: Kirk's ninth homer, a three-run seventh built on Kazuma Okamoto's nine-and-twentieth blast and Giménez's double, and at last Andrés Giménez's ninth-inning homer to level the account at five. Whereupon the bottom of the ninth undid the whole ascent: Varland walked two, and Jeff McNeil bounced a soft single to the left side — the play at first challenged and upheld — to walk the Elephants off. Toronto's three errors, two of them Okamoto's at the corner post, tell their own tale of an evening that got away. The freight is heavy for a light September crowd of 7,467: the Blue Jays, twice beaten running, stand below level once more at two-and-seventy wins against three-and-seventy defeats, a full game behind Cleveland's chair — the tiebreaker still banked, as this paper has noted all week — while the Athletics resume their September office of cheerful mischief. The clubs go again at 9:40 tonight.

BELLO'S FIRST START SINCE JUNE IS FIVE SCORELESS, RUTSCHMAN RINGS THE PESKY POLE, AND THE BOSTONS MAKE IT FIVE RUNNING: BOSTONS 5, ANAHEIM NINE 2

The interim manager Tracy opened the homestand with a calculated gamble — Brayan Bello, splendid in long relief but 1-6 with a figure above ten as a starter this year, restored to the first inning for the first time since the fourth of June — and collected five scoreless innings of four hits for his trouble, the right-hander's seventh scoreless start ever. "At the beginning, I felt kind of weird," Bello confessed, "but I was able to find myself again." The thunder was all in the second: Jarren Duran's twentieth homer, then Adley Rutschman's three-run missile off the mesh at the right-field corner — at 112.1 miles to the hour the hardest-struck baseball of the catcher's life, and the occasion for the dugout's traditional one-word roar of "Pesky!" at anything bound for that pole. Anaheim's whole account was Ballesteros's eighth homer and a late Moore groundout. The sum is the story: five straight victories, a club fifteen games over level for the first time all season — it stood fourteen under in late June — and the wild-card row's second chair held in perfect comfort at 80-65. Whitlock sealed the third save; the Anaheim nine have dropped two running and nine of ten.

SIXTEEN HITS, THREE RUNS DRIVEN BY THE ROOKIE EWING, AND TONG'S RETURN TO THE ROTATION IS A WINNING ONE: AMAZINS 9, GULF STREAM NINE 4

The Amazins spent the evening under the closed Miami roof hitting everything in reach — sixteen safeties, every man in the order collecting at least one — and the young Jonah Tong, restored to the rotation from Syracuse, made it stand: five innings, seven strikeouts, and a composure the pitcher himself dated precisely. "Last year, I felt like a kid going out there, just being shell-shocked," he said. "Now my feet are more set." The wobble was real — Graham Pauley's three-run homer in the second briefly turned a two-run New York lead into a Miami advantage — but the visitors levelled it in the third, stacked three in the fourth — Bichette's go-ahead knock among them — and added a pair in the sixth, A.J. Ewing driving in three and Semien doubling twice. Sanoja's triple and two Miami errors summarize the home nine's uneven night. The Gulf Stream nine thus surrender the opener of a set between two clubs long since parted from the pennant argument; the Amazins have won two running, and their rotation, like several this morning's paper describes, is suddenly younger than it was.

The tables this Tuesday morning read thus. In the American: Tampa Bay holds the East by four over New York, Boston six astern and blazing; the White Sox — idle Monday — keep the Central by three over Cleveland, their second-seed cushion two and a half over idle Houston; the Astros hold the West by two over Texas. The wild-card row: New York and Boston secure, and the last chair Cleveland's by a single game over Toronto, with Texas a game and a half back and Baltimore, freshly un-skidded, three. In the National: Atlanta by four over Philadelphia; Milwaukee by eight over Chicago, the season's series now banked besides; Los Angeles by ten and a half over Arizona — and the wild-card ledger turns its page: Philadelphia's first chair by half a game over the Cubs, the last chair Arizona's by half a game over San Diego, with Miami and St. Louis five back. Tonight's bill is a full board of fifteen engagements, all verified against the schedule, and the desk directs the eye to five. At 6:35 in Baltimore the Forest City nine defend their thinning chair, Bibee opposing Young and his nine victories; at 7:05 in the Bronx the evening's grandest theatre — the captain Judge, activated at last, expected in right field as Schlittler and his league-best 2.04 receives Colorado; at 7:15 in Atlanta the leaders of the two Easts meet, Tampa Bay's five-and-eighty wins calling on Atlanta's five-and-eighty; at 7:40 in Milwaukee the Cubs must answer at once, and must do it against Misiorowski and his 1.97; and at 7:40 in Kansas City the desert's cavalry arrives — Burnes, back from the surgeon's table at last, takes a major-league mound again with a wild-card chair to defend. The night owls are commended to Chavez Ravine at 10:10, Skubal against Lodolo. The almanac notes Roberto Clemente Day upon the fifteenth, and nineteen mornings remain to the season's final page on the seven-and-twentieth. Until the morrow's dispatch, keep your scorecards near and your enthusiasms nearer.

~ THE HERALD ~

The Herald Acknowledges Its Debts