Houston Astros Tickets

THE HOUSTON ASTROS, Houston's 1962 National League expansion team, played their first three seasons as the Colt .45's in a minor-league park named for the team. But in 1965, the first of the domed ballparks, the Harris County Domed Stadium, was built and billed as the Eighth Wonder of the World. Originally, it featured clear glass roof panels and real grass, which was a remarkable endeavor. Unfortunately, the players couldn't see fly balls against the roof because of the sun glare, and the groundskeepers couldn't keep the grass alive. So the roof was made opaque by painting it white, and someone invented Astroturf just in time for the team to continue playing there. Unfortunately, this innovation also gave birth to the ground-ball triple and the .rug-burn diving catch, among other negatives. In 2000, the Houston Astros moved to Enron Field, another in the current style of baseball-only, retro-looking downtown stadiums.

As far as stadiums built in the sixties go, the Astrodome held up well. It didn't have a retractable roof like those built subsequently in Toronto, Phoenix, or Seattle, but architecturally it was more interesting than most of the other fixed-dome facilities. And the upper-deck outfield seats were not usually filled, so their bright yellow-and-orange color added a bit of spark. With the move of the NFL's Houston Oilers franchise to Tennessee, the Astrodome will join the ranks of demolished stadiums. Seems hard to believe that a stadium so radical in 1965 could be totally obsolete thirty-five years later.

LARRY DIERKER "The Colt .45's broke spring lining in 1965 and came home to host the Yankees an exhibition series to christen the Astrodome. We rived at night, and the Dome was lit up-other oddly. When I walked through the tunnel and looked across the expanse of the field and up at the roof, it was really breathtaking. I felt like I had walked to the next century-from pistols to spaceships, and on high school to the big leagues, in just one year. I was eighteen years old."

DON BAYLOR "Well, I grew up in Texas, so the first 3ajor-league stadium [I saw] was the Astrodome. The first year it opened, I went down, observed Johnny Callison standing kind of sideways, playing right field. You know, I had never seen anybody stand sideways. Every body else kind of looks head-on. Then I kind of sauntered over to left field, and there was a big guy, about six foot seven, named Walt Bond, playing left field there-saw the size of his feet and I said, 'Well, I don't know if I'm going to be that big.' Always wanted to play at that level, so it was quite an experience for a young kid growing up as a football guy, wanting to be a baseball guy. So it made a big impression on me, just the Astrodome itself, all the things, how they tried to attract fans coming to the 3allpark-they had the ushers and Astro-looking Astronauts. Colt .45's shooting off the scoreboard and those kinds of things."

ANDY PETTITTE "First one I aver saw was the Astrodome. I guess you get a little chill, thinking about maybe playing here one day."
DOUG DRABEK "The Dome was my first time, and I think walking into it, how big it seemed. The sound that the Dome made, you might not get that at an outdoor stadium."

TODD KALAS (BROADCASTER) "First time I was ever in a major-league park was actually the Houston Astrodome, when my dad worked for the Houston Astros. We moved from Houston when I was five or six years old, but I do remember the exploding scoreboard and all the excitement that went along with that. Every-thing was so bright and new, it was just such a huge facility. As a youngster, everything seems huge, but that was truly amazing, and my few recollections of that place were just of the immense size."

CHUCK KNOBLAUCH "I grew up in Houston, so I remember going to the Astrodome as a kid. . . . I remember the old scoreboard. I mean, now it's old, but then it was the scoreboard that they had with the bulls and the cowboys and the shooting off their guns and stuff like that. And I always had a good time. You'd always hope for a home run 'cause that's when they would light it up. . . . I was disappointed when they changed it."

MIKE SOWELL (AUTHOR) "As a teenager living in Houston, my friend and I periodically sneaked in to the Astrodome while it was under construction, giving us a true sneak preview of baseball's first futuristic ballpark. When the Dome was completed, I was on hand for the first game played indoors, a spring exhibition game on April 9, 1965, highlighted by Mickey Mantle hitting the first home run in the stadium. I returned for the first official indoor game on April 12, 1965, and watched the Phillies beat the Houston Astros 2-0 behind the pitching of Chris Short . . . but the action on the field was overshadowed by the Astrodome itself. I particularly remember the players in batting practice hitting fun goes straight up in an effort to hit the roof (no one did at that time) and the spectacle of the exploding scoreboard with its six-shooters firing and the bulls stampeding. And who could forget the sight of the groundskeepers dressed in space suits as they raced out to drag the infield? . . . There was an atmosphere of excitement that seemed to feed on itself in what then was a spectacular structure, one worthy of its title as the Eighth Wonder of the World."