Colt Keith has 3 home runs and 6 RBIs as Tigers blow past Astros 9-3

HOUSTON (AP) — Colt Keith hit three home runs and six RBIs as the Detroit Tigers took down the Houston Astros 9-3 on Monday night.

Kevin McGonigle and Spencer Torkelson each added homers of their own in an 11-hit game for Detroit.

The 24-year-old Keith, who entered the day with one home run in 65 games this season, became the youngest Tigers player with a three-homer game since 1955. This century, only eight different Tigers have accomplished the feat — including Miguel Cabrera twice.

McGonigle homered in the second inning for a 2-0 lead before Keith drilled his first homer of the night, a 411-foot two-run shot, in the top of the third. Torkelson followed with his 12th home run of the season to put the Tigers up 5-0.

Keith launched his second ball over the right field wall to plate two more runs in the seventh before capping the scoring with a solo shot to left field in the ninth to seal the win.

The Tigers also plated runs on a Keith RBI hit by pitch in the first and a passed ball by Astros catcher Christian Vázquez in the fifth that scored Dillon Dingler.

Kyle Finnegan (2-0) threw a one-hit fifth inning to earn the win in relief. Tyler Holton worked 1 2/3 innings for his fifth-straight scoreless outing. The Tigers scratched starter Troy Melton with back tightness before the game, forcing a bullpen outing that allowed seven hits combined.

Isaac Paredes and Jose Altuve connected on back-to-back homers in the third inning to pull within 5-3, but that was all Houston mustered offensively.

Kai-Wei Teng (3-6) surrendered five runs on six hits and struck out nine for the Astros.

LHP Framber Valdez (3-5, 4.40 ERA) gets the start for the Tigers and RHP Hunter Brown (1-0, 0.84 ERA) takes the mound for the Astros in the second game of the series.

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb

Detroit Tigers' Colt Keith (33) scores on his third home run of a baseball game near Houston Astros catcher Christian Vazquez, left, during the ninth inning of a baseball game Monday, June 15, 2026, in Houston. (AP Photo/Michael Wyke)

Houston Astros' Jose Altuve, center, collects high-fives in the dugout after his solo home run against the Detroit Tigers during the third inning of a baseball game Monday, June 15, 2026, in Houston. (AP Photo/Michael Wyke)

Detroit Tigers catcher Dillon Dingler (13) and closing pitcher Enmanuel de Jesus (37) shake hands after their team defeated the Houston Astros in a baseball game Monday, June 15, 2026, in Houston. (AP Photo/Michael Wyke)

In a repeat of the third inning, Detroit Tigers' Dillon Dingler, center left, and Colt Keith, center right, hug at the plate after they both scored on the two-run home run by Keith against the Houston Astros during the seventh inning of a baseball game Monday, June 15, 2026, in Houston. (AP Photo/Michael Wyke)

Detroit Tigers' Colt Keith (33) watches his second two-run home run of a baseball game in front of Houston Astros catcher Christian Vazquez, left, during the seventh inning Monday, June 15, 2026, in Houston. (AP Photo/Michael Wyke)

A weekend BASE jumping accident in a Utah canyon killed two people, one of them a daredevil athlete best known for performing onstage with Madonna at the 2012 Super Bowl, authorities said.

The sheriff's office in Grand County, Utah, confirmed one of the dead was Andy Lewis, an extreme athlete known for feats in BASE jumping, a dangerous sport that involves parachuting to the ground after jumping from a tall fixed object such as a building, a bridge or a desert cliff overlooking a deep canyon.

The victims had been conducting a tandem jump in which two people are harnessed together, according to a social media post by Aerial Arts Moab, an acrobatics company that described Lewis as “co-owner and best friend.”

Lewis also owned BASE Jump Moab, a business that offered tandem jumps to inexperienced customers who would be harnessed to a guide wearing the parachute. Promotional videos on the company’s website show pairs of people stepping off the edges of towering cliffs and briefly plummeting before their parachutes open.

In BASE jumping circles, Lewis had a huge following and a reputation for pushing the envelope — leaping into tighter spaces or deploying his parachute later than his peers would dare, said John McEvoy, a BASE jumping instructor in Twin Falls, Idaho, who has jumped with Lewis.

“He had an incredible level of athleticism and skill that was developed over years of practice,” McEvoy said. “But then he would take an incredible amount of risk.”

Grand County Sheriff Jamison Wiggins confirmed the other person who was killed was Danny Joe Kregle, a father and grandfather who was described by a family member as an accomplished businessman.

“Danny had a wonderful sense of humor and was always looking for ways to make people laugh," relative Sydney Laverty told The Times-Independent. “One of his greatest joys was performing magic tricks alongside his granddaughter.”

Lewis was also a prominent figure in the niche sports of slacklining and tricklining, which combine elements of high-wire walking with aerial acrobatics — sometimes at perilous heights.

He went from obscure athlete to overnight celebrity when he appeared onstage in Madonna’s 2012 Super Bowl halftime show. Dressed in a Roman toga, Lewis bounced and executed tricks on his inch-wide line like it was a trampoline while Madonna sang behind him.

“My phone actually rang itself to death three days in a row,” Lewis said soon afterward in an appearance on Conan O’Brien’s late night show.

Emergency responders were dispatched Sunday to a report of people injured in a BASE jumping attempt at Mineral Bottom, a remote desert area near the Utah-Colorado line, according to the sheriff's office.

Though there's no official tally of BASE jumping deaths, a list compiled by the website BASEaddict.com shows 540 total fatalities worldwide since 1981 — including 30 people killed last year. Prominent deaths include BASE jumper Dean Potter and his climbing partner, Graham Hunt, who were killed in 2015 while attempting a wingsuit flight in California's Yosemite National Park.

A study focused on BASE jumping in Norway, published in a medical journal in 2007, estimated that BASE jumping carried risks of injury or death five to eight times greater than skydiving.

Lewis openly acknowledged the sport’s inherent danger.

“It’s weird to think about how many people are dead, because it’s like a normal thing,” Lewis told documentary filmmaker Ella Warnick in an interview published last year.

Tandem BASE jumping carries additional risk because it straps together two people, one of whom generally lacks experience, under a single parachute, McEvoy said. But because they involve novices, they also tend to be the most low-risk, basic types of jumps.

“Within BASE, it’s a very controversial topic,” McEvoy said. "There’s a lot of people who say it's the stupidest thing in the world and others arguing: `No, we’re giving people the experience of their lives.'”

No one immediately returned phone, text and Facebook messages left Monday for BASE Jump Moab.

Lewis won four straight world championships in competitive slacklining from 2008 through 2011. Lewis set a Guinness World Record for slackline surfing, swaying his feet side to side in a rocking motion that mimics surfing, while keeping his balance above China's Diaoshuilou waterfall in 2011.

In 2014, he walked a slackline suspended between two hot air balloons more than 4,000 feet (1,200 meters) above the Nevada desert.

FILE - Andy Lewis appears during Madonna's halftime performance at the NFL Super Bowl XLVI football game between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots, Feb. 5, 2012, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

FILE - U.S. slackliner Andy Lewis of Calif. balances on a slackline in Bangkok, Thailand, July 23, 2014. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit, File)