21. Minute Maid Park, Houston
Opened: 2000
Photos
If you go to enough major league games over the course of a lifetime, you hope to be lucky enough to witness a little piece of history. Maybe a no-hitter or perfect game, some sort of MLB record, or even a clinching victory for a pennant or the World Series.
For me, so far, one the biggest highlights in all of my years of touring Major League Baseball is being at Minute Maid the night Craig Biggio got his 3,000th career hit. Barely.
Certainly we didn’t plan our annual trip that way, but as the days went on and Biggio crept closer to the milestone, it at least seemed like a possibility. Then Astros manager Phil Garner did us a solid, sitting Biggio for two games in Milwaukee before they headed home to Houston, with him sitting three away from the milestone.
Still, there was no guarantee we would get to see it in either of the two games we were scheduled to attend – Thursday and Saturday. And that was before the “travel day from hell.”
Long story short: A group of us got to JFK with little trouble before eventually finding out our original flight was cancelled because of weather elsewhere. I also lost my cell phone in the process. Eventually we got booked onto flights to Austin, where we changed to a Southwest flight and braved a thunderstorm for the short trek down to Houston. I am glad I thought to grab my camera and put it in my carry-on, because none of our luggage arrived until the next day.
By the time we finally pulled everyone together and got to the ballpark, the game against the Rockies was in the fourth inning. Biggio had grounded out in the first, then singled to center in the third. Another infield hit in the fifth, and we could almost put our long day in the rearview mirror with history in sight.
Finally, with two out in the seventh and the Astros down 1-0, Biggio stepped in against the Rockies’ Aaron Cook with a runner on second. I was snapping as many photos as my camera would allow, and finally on a 2-0 count, Biggio lined a single to center to tie the game. He was thrown out trying to stretch it into a double, but that became irrelevant as the stadium broke into bedlam. I snapped more than 300 photos over the next 10 minutes from our seats down the left field line – the walkup, the hit itself, the slide into second. Then a giant banner unfurled in left field, tributes on the video board. Biggio saluting the crowd, and greeted on the field by fellow future Hall of Famer Jeff Bagwell.
He would end the night with two more hits, including another single that started a two-out rally in the bottom of the 11th that concluded with a Carlos Lee walkoff grand slam and an amazing Astros victory.
I never left my seat from the moment of our late arrival. Quite an unusual occurrence for me when seeing a ballpark for the first time.
So it was that I didn’t actually get a chance to walk around and check out the ballpark until our second game two nights later, when we sat out in right-center field. And Thursday had been such a blur that I don’t even remember how we got to the ballpark, probably a cab from the hotel. At least this time we were able to brave the summer heat – a perfectly valid reason for Houston to have a retractable roof park – and walk the few blocks to Minute Maid.
I don’t remember anything particularly interesting in the immediate neighborhood surrounding the park, which is disappointing given its downtown location. And from the outside I’m not sure you would even realize you were looking at a ballpark. Nice architecture, but just no feel to it.
There were quite a few neat features inside, however. I like the Crawford Boxes in left field, and even the train engine with the load of oranges that “choo choos” across whenever the Astros hit a home run – apparently an homage to the fact the park is built on the site of an old train station. (Although seeing the Carlos Lee fan club – “Los Cabalittos” – hopping around on their stick horses after his grand slam was even more amusing.) The gas pump somewhere on the outfield concourse that counts all of the home runs the Astros ever have hit there.
I even thought “Tal’s Hill” – which finally was removed before this season – was a neat quirk, considering I once played softball on a field where I had to run up a slope in right field to track down fly balls to the fence. But I can see why major league outfielders would have thought it was a nuisance, if not a major injury hazard.
Of course, the big downer is that we never got to see the place with the roof open. It’s tough to ignore how monstrous the structure is in right field, which is command central for the roof, the scoreboard, and a fair chunk of seats. But even more striking it how little there really is beyond left and center. Like I said, the Crawford Boxes, the train, the huge windows that do give you a glimpse of the outside world. I have a feeling it is really neat when the roof is open, the retractable windows are pulled back and half the outfield is open to the elements. It kind of feels like a modern version of Fenway’s Green Monster, with only a handful of seats but much closer to the action.
At least it’s a big step up from the Astrodome somewhere across town. Give that old concrete place kudos for at least showing the way that baseball could be played indoors, and give places like Minute Maid even more credit for doing whatever they can to make for a more authentic baseball experience. But with retractable roof ballparks and hot-weather cities, sadly, there is only so much you can do.
