Enron Field, err, I mean Minute Maid Park

One major benefit of living in downtown Houston is that we live across from the baseball park, formally and ignobly known as Enron Field. It now goes by the more innocuously named, Minute Maid Park, as it has for the last eight years. My sister got Brooke and I tickets to 10 games (they had a deal 10 games for $20) for my birthday and it has been fun. The worst part about going to any sporting event was always paying for parking and the subsequent traffic on the drive home. Now, we can leave our house 5 minutes before the game and we don't have to mess with the traffic. Further, every Friday they have a fireworks show over the stadium, right after the game. It is borderline dangerous and this has been the closest I have ever been to real fireworks in my life. They go off right over our section. Its pretty cool. Our tickets are in the nose-bleed section, but, in addition to the fire-works you get a good panoramic view of the action and a nice breeze when the roof is open. Yes, Minute Maid is one of those retractable domes, which always seemed silly to me in a warm weather city. The first retractable dome was in Toronto which made perfect sense: a snow-out perhaps? But Houston? Unfortunately, baseball is so artificial when it is played in a dome, although, from a engineering standpoint, it was pretty cool to watch the dome open up for the fireworks.

Now you may be asking, "Are you Astros Fans?" Well, from Brooke's standpoint, she is lucky if she knows which uniforms the Astros are wearing at a given game, ha, ha. On the other hand, I have always been a Yankee fan and haven't ever paid that much attention to the National League. (For those of you that don't know, yes, the Astros are in the National League. Don't feel bad, Brooke doesn't either) There was a few years when I was growing up, when my sister, Erin, fell in love with Dale Murphy of the Braves and we were forced to watch "Ted Turners team" every night on TBS during the 1980s, but that was it. So, besides my eternal hate for the Braves, I generally don't have an opinion either way about most teams in the National League. Up until about 10 years ago, the American League and the National League never even met during the regular season. I always thought this best: I mean, who wants to watch the Pirates or the Reds anyway.

However, while I was growing up in Orlando, there were two teams which I saw more than once for spring training games: The Twins, which used to play at Tinker Field in Orlando, and the Astros, which still play in Kissimmee. One of my great memories growing up was playing Little League baseball and occasionally have the opportunity to see a big league game during the Spring. This was your chance to get autographs and meet real ballplayers. Bear in mind, that this was in the 1980s, well before the Rays, or the Marlins disgraced our fair state. So, as for MLB, spring training was all there was back then.

Now, to answer your hypothetical question, I won't say I love the Astros, but, as I explained, I do have a little nostalgia for them because of my childhood. It is just too bad that they got rid of their blinding solar burst uniforms. Yes, they were ugly, but they were, well, unique. Now, every team tries to look like every other team and I think baseball has lost some of its soul because of it. Yeah, I know they want to sell the merchandise, but for me, I would much rather buy a retro uniform than any of that blah, vanilla garbage they wear now. In a day, when the Astros look like the Rangers, which resemble the Nationals, which look like the Reds...then creativity may be an issue.