Houston Astros celebrate after clinching the AL West division title in a baseball game against the Athletics, Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026, in West Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Sara Nevis)
Astros Escape With the AL West Crown at .500
The Houston Astros are American League West champions once again, and they did it the hard way, avoiding baseball infamy. They’re playing in October for the fifth time in six years.
Houston finished the regular season 81-81, which was just enough to claim its fifth division title in six years.
It wasn’t pretty, but in October, nobody asks how you got in.
A Whisker From History
The Astros came within a single game of an unwanted piece of baseball trivia. Had they finished below .500, they would have become the first team ever to win a division with a losing record. Instead, that .500 finish keeps the record books untouched, though only barely.
Rangers Fall Just Short
Their closest pursuer, the Texas Rangers, ended the year at 80-82, one game back of Houston. Even a loss on the final day wouldn’t have cost the Astros the title, because they held the tiebreaker over Texas. In other words, Houston had a safety net, and the Rangers never had a real path to the crown.
Next Up: The White Sox
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29
The reward for all that tension is a home date in the postseason. Houston will host the Chicago White Sox in a best-of-three Wild Card Series beginning Tuesday. In a short series, anything can happen, and a division title (even a narrow one) means the Astros get the home-field advantage.
What to Watch
An 81-win season isn’t the résumé of a juggernaut, and the Astros know it. But this is a franchise that has made a habit of finding another gear when the calendar flips. The regular season was a grind; the postseason is a fresh start, and every team enters it with the same record: 0-0.
For a club that just survived a coin-flip finish, that might be the best news of all.
Sources:
- ESPN, Chicago White Sox team page: http://www.espn.com/mlb/team/_/name/chw/chicago-white-sox
- Season record, standings, tiebreaker and Wild Card Series details as provided by the requester; check the ESPN MLB standings and scoreboard for confirmation.
A week after 28-year-old Venezuelan national Wilber Garces Perez was shot and wounded by an ICE agent, demonstrators returned to the North Austin intersection where it took place.
Gathering on Sunday afternoon—around the exact time of the shooting seven days prior—protesters chanted, held signs, and called for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to end its presence in Austin and across the state.
(Photos: CBS Austin)
SAN ANTONIO
Misael Ramos, an Austin City Council District 1 candidate, was released from the Travis County Jail after his Saturday morning arrest by Texas DPS troopers.
Ramos was taken into custody on Manor Road on an outstanding warrant for participating in a riot. The charge stems from a North Austin protest six days prior, which followed the shooting and injury of 28-year-old Venezuelan national Wilber Garces Perez by an ICE agent.
Rich Heyman is a candidate for City Council in District 9.
Paige Ellis was sure she had secured a spot on the November ballot, giving her a shot at extending her tenure past term limits.
She was wrong.
Ellis’ team faced some hurdles: broiling heat, pouring rain and too few canvassers too late in the process. But they are still trying to figure out how they missed the mark. (Austin Current)
Four people are dead following a high-speed police pursuit through Tyler early Sunday morning that ended in a fatal crash after state troopers deployed a PIT maneuver.
The chase began around 4:00 a.m. when Tyler police spotted a vehicle tied to a shooting on Lake Placid Road, which had left two hospital victims wounded. The suspect car fled onto Highway 31 East before DPS troopers intercepted and forced the crash to end the pursuit. Three occupants died at the scene and a fourth died at the hospital, while the Tyler Police Department, DPS, and the Texas Rangers continue to investigate.
As Pflugerville ISD prepares to close four elementary schools at the end of the school year, its Rezoning Task Force has narrowed down new attendance boundary maps to two final options. Officials attributed the closures of Dessau, Parmer Lane, Pflugerville, and Windermere elementaries to falling enrollment and state funding levels that fail to match rising educational costs. (KXAN-TV)
COTALAND’s grand opening weekend hit another major bump on Sunday after its flagship attraction, the Circuit Breaker tilt coaster, suffered its second mid-ride breakdown in as many days. Theme park guests were left stranded in midair for the second consecutive afternoon before ride operators managed to manually reset the vehicle and evacuate riders from the track.
WEATHER
SUNDAY’S HIGH / LOW TEMPERATURES
AUSTIN-BERGSTROM INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
CAMP MABRY
3-DAY OUTLOOK
5-DAY FORECAST / AUSTIN, TEXAS
The 7 Oaks Fire in Crockett County is not yet contained. It was discovered last evening. As of the latest update, the fire has burned 75 acres and remains 0% contained.
A lingering nor’easter will deliver a final round of rain along much of the Northeast after blasting the coast with 60 mph wind gusts over the weekend, toppling trees and power lines, as well as bringing significant flooding to some coastal communities.
In its efforts to deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible, the Trump administration has increasingly relied on a highly controversial strategy: deporting people to countries they have no connection to.
Last week, a federal court ruled the practice to be illegal because it violated people’s right to due process. The administration challenged that ruling, and now it is in front of the Supreme Court.
Nicholas Casey tells the story of Roberto Mosquera, who moved to the United States from Cuba as a child. He has been held in the small country of Eswatini since July 2025.
In the September 27 episode, Republican U.S. Representative Jodey Arrington tells us why he’s calling for a constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget and why he chose Dallas for a field hearing to discuss the $40 trillion national debt. Republican nominee for Ag Commissioner Nate Sheets explains why he’s not calling for a data center moratorium and how he’d help Texas farmers and ranchers stay in business. And Dallas Council Member Paula Blackmon on the coalition now calling for Dallas voters to decide the fate of City Hall.
(Episode from September 27, 2026)
Collective spending on advertising by Democratic state Rep. James Talarico, Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, and super PACs supporting each of them has already topped $153 million. AdImpact projects it will reach more than double that by Election Day. (Houston Public Media)
Camp Mystic has proposed selling its property as legal troubles have continued to mount for the Texas Hill Country retreat. (San Antonio News-Express)
The National Socialist Movement, a prominent neo-Nazi and white supremacist organization, held a planned rally Saturday in Prosper, a city about 35 miles north of Dallas. (Houston Chronicle)
SPORTS
MLB: The Houston Astros completed their wire-to-wire late-season rally on Sunday, clinching their eighth American League West division crown in nine seasons following a 6–4 loss by the rival Texas Rangers to the Minnesota Twins.
Houston punctuated the division title later in the day with a commanding 9–0 shutout over the Athletics in Sacramento, concluding the regular season at 81–81 to secure the AL West title via tiebreaker over Texas.
The Astros now turn their focus to the postseason, where they will open October play at Daikin Park hosting the Chicago White Sox in Game 1 of the AL Wild Card series.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29
NFL: RIO DE JANEIRO & INDIANAPOLIS — It was a double-dose of Sunday heartbreak for Lone Star State football fans, as both Texas NFL franchises suffered tight, down-to-the-wire defeats in Week 3.
In a historic international showdown in Rio de Janeiro, the Dallas Cowboys surrendered an early 10-point lead and fell 34–31 to the Baltimore Ravens after kicker Tyler Loop drilled a walk-off 56-yard field goal as time expired.
Meanwhile, up in Indianapolis, the Houston Texans dropped to 0–3 on the season, falling 19–17 to the division-rival Colts on a late fourth-quarter field goal by Spencer Shrader.
Both Texas teams now return home looking to reset before clashing head-to-head in Houston next Sunday.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 3
COLLEGE FOOTBALL: The Texas Longhorns escaped Tennessee despite a barrage of special teams blunders—can Jeff Banks fix this before it costs Texas their championship dreams?
Texas-born actors Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson sit down with Conan O’Brien to discuss how they first met, their very different approaches to acting, how much of their new show Brothers (shot in and around Austin) is based on their real-life personas, and whether they might actually be brothers.
