Ronald Acuña Jr. and Mookie Betts are literally the leading men in this weekend's featured series between the two best teams in baseball, the Braves and Dodgers.

When you have a matchup with so much fanfare and star power, you want to see the best at their absolute best. And in the entertaining opener of this four-game set Thursday, Acuña and Betts, leading off for their respective clubs, both showed why the NL MVP competition is effectively a two-man race.

Acuña punctuated the Braves' six-run second inning with a grand slam that gave him 30 dingers this season and placed him in a power-speed club with exactly one member. The clout also made Acuña the first player to reach the 30-homer, 30-steal plateau twice through his age-25 season. In the ninth inning, he picked up his 62nd stolen base, the second-most by a Braves player since 1900. The franchise's AL/NL record of 72 steals is definitely attainable for Atlanta's dynamo.

However, Betts led the Dodgers' charge back into the game with a pair of home runs -- a three-run shot that traveled just beyond Acuña's outstretched glove in right field in the fifth followed by a solo homer in the seventh. It was Betts' sixth multihomer game this year, the second-most in MLB.

Betts' 250th and 251st career home runs capped a remarkable month in which he was the best hitter in baseball. His August slash line was a ridiculous .455/.516/.839. His 1.355 OPS was more than 100 points higher than any other qualified batter. His 11 home runs, giving him a career-high 38, were his second-most during any month of his 10-year career. And Betts' 51 hits were the most by a Dodger in any month since the team moved to Los Angeles in 1958.

The Braves ultimately prevailed, 8-7, in a game that lived up to the hype, and with stars who stepped up to the moment. Acuña and Betts became only the third pair of starting leadoff hitters to record a home run and four RBIs in the same game since 1920, when RBI became official.

This late-summer blockbuster in Hollywood continues tonight at 10:10 ET on MLB Network. What will Acuña and Betts do next? With either of them, nothing is impossible.