Rangers’ hot streak, Luka Doncic’s magazine cover and more

“Kevin Sherrington’s A La Carte” is a weekly newsletter curated by DMN sports columnist Kevin Sherrington where he hits all of the latest sports topics around North Texas and all major sports.

Sign up for the Sports Roundup newsletter to receive exclusive content from Sherrington every week. Read an excerpt from this week’s newsletter below.

Kevin Sherrington’s A La Carte

— Chris Young demanded a certifiable hot streak from the Rangers in order to make a deadline pitch to the owner, and the one Bruce Bochy handed him needed oven mitts.

Rangers

On July 9, the Rangers were in fourth place in the West, three games under .500 and 10 games behind the first-place Astros. Since then, they’ve won 11 of 13 games, including eight of nine after the All-Star break, to pull them within four games of Houston and in a tie with the Mariners for the final wild card spot.

The least they should come away with this week is a big arm for the back of the bullpen. Anything more will tell you the power of Young’s persuasion.

— The Mariners, who hold the tie-breaker over the Rangers, got a leg up on the Rangers by acquiring Josh Naylor from Arizona. Naylor’s pop and low strikeout rate would have made a nice platoon with Jake Burger. He’d have given the low-key Rangers a little personality, too.

— Fifty-two games after a pitch broke his right hand, Joc Pederson had a right to look a little rusty in his return Sunday. But it’ll take a case of WD-40 to fix that swing.

— Luka Doncic tells “Men’s Health” his “whole body looks better” because of a gluten-free, low-sugar diet that left him looking svelte for the magazine’s pics. But it’s not so much what he does in July as what he doesn’t do in January. As noted last week, if Luka’s learned his lesson, Nico Harrison should be very afraid.

— ESPN’s Kevin Pelton awards the Mavs a B-minus for their offseason, giving them no credit for lucking into Cooper Flagg. Pelton would like to see Nico off-load some of their front-court depth to help elsewhere. Not a bad thought, but, considering how much time Anthony Davis and Dereck Lively II spend in their street clothes, I think Daniel Gafford could be a MFFL.

— Speculation about Arch Manning as first pick of ’26 draft seems premature. Here’s betting he comes back for another year as a starter no matter how Texas does. He doesn’t need NFL money, but he does need college reps.

— Story time: As it happens, I have not just one but two of Blackie Sherrod’s anthologies, which is short shrift for such material, at that.

One of my favorites is his story about meeting Moses himself, Charlton Heston, at a World Championship Tennis dinner at the Fairmont. Every time they crossed paths, which was fairly often, the actor would stick out his hand and introduce himself, prompting Blackie to write, “That was the night I met Chuck Heston. Constantly. He seemed friendly enough, although not much for faces.”

I recalled this line recently after several run-ins with the Rangers’ media-gate guard, who’s doing a bang-up job protecting a couple acres of parking from assault by our humble hordes. Even after establishing my bona fides and parking privileges early on this summer, it’s been the same drill every visit. Like trying to get into Ray Davis’ suite. Or wallet. Eventually the guard recalls our mutual history and waves me through, though not without considerable wear on my psyche.

This pretty much explains the hierarchy in terms of talent as well as subject: Blackie writes about failing to make an impression on a Hollywood legend, and I don’t ring a bell with a guy in a lawn chair.

Rangers’ hot streak, Luka Doncic’s magazine cover and more

Tags: