Houston Astros’ Jose Altuve, left, scores as Texas Rangers catcher Jonah Heim covers home plate during a 2022 game in Houston.

The Astros and Rangers have played in plenty of heated environments when they faced each other over the years, but nothing like they’re about to experience. For the first time in the franchises’ history, they’ll square off in the postseason, this time with a trip to the World Series on the line.

The series begins Sunday after the Rangers swept the Orioles and the Astros dispatched the Twins on Thursday night. That will be exactly two weeks after the Astros came in and stole the American League West title from the Rangers on the final day of the regular season, leading to Alex Bregman’s “I guess we’ll never know” speech. It’s also just about three months from when the teams got into it and the benches cleared before cooler heads eventually prevailed.

The players likely will say all the right things leading up to the American League Championship Series, but it’s pretty clear they don’t have much affection for each other. And, it’s a feud that goes back decades.

Here’s a rundown of the beef between the Astros and Rangers that dates back more than 50 years…

Houston’s fight to keep MLB out of Arlington

Roy Hofheinz knew Major League Baseball belonged in Texas, but once he helped get the Colt .45s off the ground in the early 1960s, he wasn’t keen on sharing the state with another franchise. Arlington Mayor Tom Vandergriff worked for years to get a team in his city and even had Arlington in the running for a National League franchise during the 1968 expansion, but Hofheinz was vocally against it. The expansion teams eventually went to San Diego and Montreal. Vandergriff, who died in 2010, even recalled having President Lyndon B. Johnson make a call to Hofheinz to ask him to reconsider his stance.

“I was in the room when he placed the call,” Vandergriff told former Houston Chronicle columnist Richard Justice in 2001. “I could only hear his end of the conversation, but it became apparent he wasn’t making much headway. He finally hung up, and I’ll never forget his words. He said, ‘I don’t think God Himself could change Roy’s mind.’ I didn’t say anything, but that’s the only time I ever heard President Johnson even hint that God could do something he couldn’t.”

Eventually, Vandergriff convinced Washington Senators owner Robert Short to move his team to Arlington for the 1972 season, 10 years after Hofheniz helped bring Major League Baseball to Texas.

Fight for Nolan Ryan’s legacy

Nolan Ryan grew up in Alvin, just south of Houston, and spent nine years as an Astros pitcher compared to just five in Arlington, yet he went into the Hall of Fame with a Rangers cap on his plaque. Ryan bolted for the Rangers when Astros owner John McCullen asked him to take a 20% pay cut after the 1988 season. Ryan signed with the other team in the state and wore their uniform while he won his 300th game, recorded his 5,000th strikeout and threw two more no-hitters. He also returned to the Astrodome with the Rangers for an exhibition game in 1993 and was greeted by 53,567 fans. After retiring, Ryan switched between teams as a member of the front office. He was a special assistant to the general manager with the Astros in 2005 and the Rangers’ president and CEO from 2008 to 2013. He returned to the Astros as an executive adviser a year after his son Reid Ryan was hired as team president. Nolan left the Astros front office when Reid was reassigned and eventually left the organization in 2020. Both the Astros and Rangers retired Ryan’s number, but he has a statue outside Globe Life Field and that T on his hat in Cooperstown.

Keeping Yu Darvish from perfection

The 2013 Astros are the worst team in franchise history, losing 111 games. Game No. 2 of 162 was nothing to brag about either, except when Marwin Gonzalez came up with two outs in the ninth. The Rangers were about to wrap up a 7-0 victory, but more importantly, Yu Darvish needed just one more out to throw the 24th perfect game in Major League Baseball history. Instead, Gonzalez swung at the first pitch and hit a ground ball through Darvish’s legs right up the middle for a basehit. “Attaboy, Marwin,” Astros color commentator Geoff Blum said on the broadcast.

First near-fight

In 2015, both benches cleared and there was plenty of pushing and shoving after Astros catcher Hank Conger and Rangers fiery second baseman Rougned Odor exchanged words. Conger took exception to how long it was taking Odor to step into the box, and Odor didn’t like Conger saying something to him. That led to Conger getting out of his crouch and going chest to chest with Odor while the Rangers’ Prince Fielder came running out of the on-deck circle to separate the two. Astros manager A.J. Hinch grabbed Fielder, which set off Rangers manager Jeff Banister who yelled in Hinch’s face, “Don’t touch my guy!” Although some of the moments mentioned above might have given the rivalry some juice off the field, this was the first real sign of animosity on the field. “It’s good to see some rivalry baseball rear its head,” Hinch said after the game.

‘We came and took it! ‘

Two months after the benches-clearing incident, the Astros were in position to win their first division crown in 14 years when they headed to Arlington with a 1.5-game lead in the American League West. Instead, the Rangers swept the four-game series and went on to win the division. When the Rangers clinched, their social media team mocked the Astros’ “Come and Take It!” campaign by proclaiming “We Came and Took It!” on a ballpark video board.

Operation BTSOOTR

Alex Bregman let some youthful exuberance get the better of him in 2017 when he tweeted “Operation #BTSOOTR” before the first Astros-Rangers series of the season. To avoid censors, we’ll say the hashtag stood for “Beat The Stuffing Out of the Rangers.” Feel free to substitute the S-word of your choice. The Rangers actually took a screenshot of the tweet, printed it out and posted it on a whiteboard inside the Minute Maid Park visitors clubhouse. Later, Bregman called his tweet “a rookie mistake.” Then, in that day’s game…

Lance McCullers vs. All Y’all

With Alex Bregman’s tweet posted in the Rangers’ clubhouse, Rangers starting pitcher Andrew Cashner hit both Jose Altuve and Yuli Gurriel with pitches. A few innings later, Astros starter Lance McCullers threw a 97 mph fastball behind Mike Napoli, who immediately took steps toward the mound only for McCullers to walk his way, too. Both dugouts and bullpens emptied before anything more than pushing and shoving occurred. McCullers went on to strike out Napoli with a curveball and stared him down on his way to the dugout. “It looked like Napoli took exception and we hadn’t seen each other in a while, so we went out on the field and said hello,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch said after the game.

‘Nobody knows what Arlington is’

A month after that skirmish, Rangers manager Jeff Banister spoke about the in-state rivalry, telling a Dallas radio station, “All I know is they get to put Houston on their chest, we get to put Texas on ours.” McCullers had a quick comeback for the manager on Twitter, writing, “It’s because nobody knows what Arlington is.”

Hurricane Harvey

When Hurricane Harvey flooded Houston, inflicting $125 billion in damage and killing 107 people in Texas and Louisiana, the Astros were on the road. With much of the city underwater, the team couldn’t fly back to Houston for its series against the Rangers, but they were in Dallas and could have played the Rangers in Arlington with the two teams swapping the location of their final two series of the season. The series originally scheduled for Arlington was on the final week of the regular season and the Rangers didn’t want to give it up, so they refused to change their schedule, forcing the Astros to play their “home” series in Tampa. Astros pitcher Lance McCullers summed up the feelings of the team and city when he tweeted, “Classy as always, should be absolutely ashamed. Greed never takes off days, apparently. Stay strong #Htown! We hope to be home soon.”

‘Why don’t you call A.J. and ask him?’

Rangers manager Jeff Banister got hit with a stinging question at a Rangers caravan stop in Round Rock a few months after the Astros won the 2017 World Series. A reporter, who was so upbeat it sounded like he might be an Astros fan said, “Banny, how happy were you for A.J. Hinch and the Astros to bring it home for the division and the American League?” Banister laughed, but said, “That’s a great question. Why don’t you call A.J. and ask him?”

Immaculate innings

This might not have caused any bad blood between the two teams, but it certainly was embarrassing for the Rangers. In a 2022 game, Astros pitchers Luis Garcia and Phil Maton both had immaculate innings against the Rangers at Globe Life Field. An immaculate inning — striking out all three batters in the inning on nine pitches — is extremely rare with only 114 having been thrown in major league history. Garcia and Maton — who struck out the same three batters: Nathaniel Lowe, Ezequiel Duran and Brad Miller — are the only two pitchers to throw immaculate innings on the same calendar date, let alone in one game.

Benches clear in 2023

Astros catcher Martín Maldonado and Rangers slugger Marcus Semien started a benches-clearing incident in a July 2023 game that was filled with tension. Texas starter Andrew Heaney hit Yordan Alvarez with a pitch in the first inning. Astros starter Framber Valdez returned fire by hitting Semien in the third. Semien homered an inning later and appeared to yell something at Valdez as he rounded the bases, which led Maldonado to confront him at home plate. Semien responded by putting his finger to his lips in a shushing motion. Later in the game, Semien scored on an Adolis Garcia grand slam and hopped onto home plate with both feet. Maldonado took exception and the two began jawing while Garcia still was rounding the bases. When Garcia reached home plate, he also started talking to Maldonado and both benches and bullpens emptied quickly. Maldonado and Semien both were ejected. “You jaw at a guy, you expect to get something in return,” Astros manager Dusty Baker said after the game. “Maldy wasn’t going to go away like he was some little punk, you know what I mean?”

‘I guess we’ll never know!’

The Rangers led the American League West for most of the 2023 regular season, looking like they were going to snap the Astros’ streak of division dominance. Instead, the Rangers lost four of their final six games, while the Astros closed with four straight wins to take the division crown on the final day of the regular season. Before the champagne celebration popped off, Astros third baseman Alex Bregman channeled his inner Kanye West in a speech to the team. “A lot of people were wondering what it was going to be like if the ‘Stros didn’t win the division. I guess we’ll never know!,” Bregman said before popping his bottle and starting a storm of champagne spray.