As I was taking a tour of Minute Maid Park a few weeks back, I found myself wondering, “Why haven’t I done this before?”   As a native Houstonian who has spent most of my life living here and following the Astros, I was just now taking a tour of Minute Maid Park. Minute Maid Park, home of the Houston Astros, is a retractable roof stadium which opened in 2000. The former home of the Astros being the Astrodome, which continues to stand today on the 610 Loop South, although it is not in use for any events.

A family member had some out-of-town guests visiting and wanted to provide a unique Houston experience, which is how I landed on this tour. I tagged along and found myself standing on the field behind home plate (pictured above). The tour, about two hours long, was time well spent for reasons in addition to having an opportunity to stand behind home plate. There is an Astro’s historical perspective provided on the tour, which is especially meaningful for someone like me, who grew up going to the Astrodome to watch the Astros in the bright orange uniforms – the days of Nolan Ryan, Mike Scott, and Jose Cruz.

So how did the famous “Astroturf” of the Astrodome come about? Originally, the Astrodome had clear windows on the top to let in sunlight to allow the natural grass on the field to grow. The Astrodome did not have a retractable roof and was constructed to be a comfortable place to watch a game. Imagine an afternoon Astros game in August outdoors sitting on metal stands. Eventually, the clear windows on the roof had to be painted over as the light coming through the windows made it difficult for the fielders to catch fly balls. Natural grass was no longer possible without the sunshine coming through the windows, so Astroturf was born out of necessity.

There is also a tour of the press box with a wall of pictures and plaques honoring Milo Hamilton, who was the announcer for the Astros for twenty-five years. If you go back far enough in years, there was a point in time in which there was one televised game each week, appropriately named “The Game of the Week.”   That is one televised game the entire week. The rest of the games were followed by the fans on the radio, so the announcer was a big part of the personality of the team and Milo was one of the best. He worked for other major league baseball teams before arriving at the Astros including the Atlanta Braves where we called Hank Aaron’s famous home run that broke Babe Ruth’s home run record. Aaron broke that record hitting his 715th home run in 1974 at the Braves stadium in Atlanta. On the tour, I learned that Dusty Baker was the batter on deck when that home run went over the fence. I had no idea that was the case.

I do not want to spoil anymore of the tour so I will stop there. Take the tour, Astros fan or not, baseball fan or not and then you can ask yourself, “Why haven’t I done this before?”