9/25/2009
Houston, you've got a problem.
You call your team the Astros, yet the mascot is a rabbit in a conductor outfit. The franchise has for years been one of the leaders in technology and progressive thinking in the game, yet now plays in a stadium that focuses on evoking the past. I'm confused.
Don't get me wrong, Minute Maid Park is absolutely beautiful. It opened in 2000 to replace the "Eighth Wonder of the World," the Astrodome. In one of the most hilarious unfortunate naming rights blunders in history, the park opened as "Enron Field," and when the now infamous scandal was at its peak in 2002, the team was forced to scramble to find a new naming rights partner, and was able to come up with Houston-based Minute Maid.
It's easy to find in downtown Houston, and parking is pretty plentiful and cheap for a downtown park. I had planned to buy an upper deck seat for about $12 for the game, but wasn't aware that it was fireworks night, so the whole upper deck was sold out. I was forced to buy a seat for $40, which I wasn't happy about until I took my seat about 5 rows from Lance Berkman at first base and right behind the camera well. Great value for a $40 ticket.
The food is OK, but BIG. Of course, this is Texas, so there are a lot of southwestern specialties and tex-mex options. It isn't great food, and its a bit expensive, but you do get a lot for your money in the end.
Minute Maid Park probably has my favorite in-stadium promotion in the league. The foul poles have been christened the "Eat Mor Fowl" Poles, and if an Astros player hits one of them, everyone in the stadium gets a free Chick-Fil-A sandwich. Awesome.
But my one big problem with the place is that you would hardly know that a team named "The Astros" played here.
It was built on the site of the old Houston Union Station, and in fact, the team's offices and team store are located in the old Union Station building. As an homage to the site, a locomotive sits atop the wall in Left Field, and when an Astros player hits a home run, the train toots its horn and moves across the tracks. The mascot is also named "Junction Jack," and is indeed a rabbit in a conductor outfit. Which would all be fine and good, if the team were the Houston Engineers or Houston Conductors or Houston Locomotives, but they're the Houston Astros. Where's the goofy aliens? Futuristic technology? The nods to the amazingly rich history of the space industry in Houston?
The only thing futuristic about the stadium is the retractable roof. I suppose having a space shuttle launch every time an Astros player hit a home run would be a bit much, but even the uniforms and colors are described as being "meant to evoke images of old Texas and steam trains." I think that a few subtle nods to the Union Station site are cool, but its a bit overdone here. Like I said, the stadium is very nice, and you definitely know that you're in Texas, but none of it feels very "Astros-y."
I may be making a bigger deal about this than necessary, but it just feels weird to me. I actually like the train, and think the Union Station incorporation is really well done, but I think I would rather have the space motif than the southwestern train one.
There are a ton of stadiums out there that try so hard to evoke the past. It just would have been nice to see one, especially the one where the Astros play, to present a vision of the future. There's a reason that most modern stadiums don't feature a hill in center field anymore, but the people in Houston didn't seem to get that memo.
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