Both Greater Houston and DFW have humid subtropical climates; however, DFW mostly has dry winds in the summer and sometimes icy conditions in the winter, with some frost at night, compared to Greater Houston's severe relative humidity and minimal wind, except near the coast, and milder winter conditions.

[8] The Astros, as they came to be with the new all-weathered Harris County Domed Stadium, really did not have a strong rivalry with any team in the NL, except for the St. Louis Cardinals and later on the Cincinnati Reds and Atlanta Braves.

At the time, the two major leagues were highly autonomous business entities, and as such Judge Hofheinz was unable to block the eventual arrival of the Junior Circuit in North Texas.

Before they were the Texas Rangers, the team belonged to the Beltway as the third version of the Washington Senators where they played mediocre baseball most of the time for the first 11 years of existence.

(At one time, the Kansas City Athletics were interested in moving to the Dallas/Fort Worth area in the early 1960s but were voted down, 9–1, by the other American League owners.

In order to cut down on traveling costs and align teams together based on geography, the MLB owners came up with many plans to put the Astros and Rangers in a more suitable placement together.

[17] During the 2005–06 off-season, the Florida Marlins were considering moving to San Antonio, among other cities, due to the lack of funding for a new stadium.

Another professional baseball team in Texas, whether by relocation or expansion, in either league would create greater rivalries, similar to the kind in the NBA with the Spurs, Mavericks, and Rockets, and possible realignment issues.

A game scheduled for Sunday June 30, 2002, at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington was postponed due to rain and rescheduled for Monday, September 2.

[22][23] Beginning in 2008, the Lone Star Series saw for the first time two African-American managers go head-to-head against one another, the Astros' Cecil Cooper and the Rangers' Ron Washington.

On February 6, 2008, Nolan Ryan became the Rangers' team president after being the special assistant to general manager, scouting players, and holding pitching camps with the Astros for the previous three seasons.

[24] On August 18, 2009, the Rangers acquired Iván Rodríguez in a trade from the Houston Astros to help them down the stretch for the purpose of achieving their first playoff appearance in ten years.

To help ease the Rangers' schedule, Commissioner Bud Selig required that the Astros join the AL West in 2013, so both teams would have another division rival in relatively close geographical proximity to one another while ensuring that both the AL West and the National League Central both would have the same number of teams as the other divisions.

[27] On February 11, 2014, Nolan Ryan returned to the Astros as an executive advisor to his son, Reid, the president of business operations; general manager Jeff Luhnow; and owner Jim Crane.

While the umpire quickly got in the middle of the two advancing toward each other, both teams soon swarmed close to each other, which included Prince Fielder (the batter scheduled to hit after Odor), who pushed Conger aside while having his bat with him.

[31] Later in September, with both teams in contention for the playoffs, the Astros and Rangers faced each other in a pivotal series, with Texas sweeping all four games.

[32] The Rangers clinched the 2015 AL West Division title, while the Astros entered the 2015 playoffs as a Wild Card team.

Garcia threw his in the second inning and Maton in the seventh, and they both struck out the same trio of hitters—Nathaniel Lowe, Ezequiel Durán, and Brad Miller.

In their long and distinguished managerial careers, Baker and Bochy also concurrently guided other teams as rivals in the National League since the 1990s, accumulating over 2,000 wins each.

"[44] The Astros retained the silver boot by proceeding to demolish the Rangers in the series, scoring six runs in the seventh inning of a 13-6 opening win[45] before crushing Texas in the latter two games with five home runs hit in each game, the first time that a team had won the Lone Star Series seven seasons in a row since Texas did so from 2007 to 2013.

[54] After the Astros lost the series, Houston mayor Sylvester Turner honored the wager and indeed wore a Rangers jersey to a city council meeting.

Those players are: Doug Brocail,[58][59] Robinson Chirinos,[60][61] Richard Hidalgo,[62][63] Mike Lamb,[64][65] Hunter Pence,[66][67] and Iván Rodríguez.