Fans at the first non-Opening Day sellout at Minute Maid Park in three years saw plenty of home runs, an ejection and their Astros nearly rally from a six-run deficit.
Mark Teixeira's two-run double in the eighth inning, however, broke a tie game and gave the New York Yankees a 9-6 victory over the AL West leaders.
Brian McCann hit a grand slam in the first inning, and Chris Young added a two-run blast to give the Yankees a 6-0 lead an inning later.
Home runs by Chris Carter, Carlos Correa and Jose Altuve, though, pulled the Astros even, and it wasn't until the eighth that the slugfest was decided.
With runners on first and second and one out, Pat Neshek (3-1) thought he had Teixeira struck out on a 2-2 pitch, but home plate umpire Rob Drake called the pitch a ball and Teixeira took the next one deep into the gap in left.
Brett Gardner and Young came around to score, and Chase Headley tacked on a tape-measure solo shot in the ninth to secure New York's third win in four games.
The late heroics overshadowed another poor showing from Masahiro Tanaka, who surrendered a career-high six runs on seven hits over five innings. He gave up seven runs -- five earned -- his previous time out.
Houston starter Brett Oberholtzer, who had allowed three earned runs or fewer in all six of his previous outings this year, did not make it out of the second inning.
A double and two walks loaded the bases in the first, and McCann launched his 11th career grand slam into the second deck in right field.
Young, a Houston native whose three-run home lifted the Yankees on Friday, blasted a two-run shot in the second off a frustrated Oberholtzer, whose next pitch brushed Alex Rodriguez off the plate and immediately resulted in an ejection.
Carter started the Astros' comeback by knocking in a run and scoring on a George Springer single in the bottom half, and he added a moonshot in the fourth to cut the deficit to 6-3.
Correa launched a two-run, opposite-field homer in the fifth, and Altuve went back-to-back with a fly ball that carried into the left-field seats.
The Astros loaded the bases in the seventh, only to leave them full when Chasen Shreve (5-1) struck out Jon Singleton.
[SportsNetwork.com]
