7/26/2009 - Minute Maid Park - MLB Ballpark #25

2009 Game #23 - New York Mets at Houston Astros

Final Score: Mets 8, Astros 3
Hot Dog - 4/5

It was hot and steamy in Houston yesterday.  Thankfully, it was neither hot nor steamy inside the air conditioned Minute Maid Park.  However, it’s too bad that, after an early lead, the Astros quit trying and lost the game.
As usual, we requested the “cheap seats” when we got tickets.  $7 each got us two seats at the far end of the upper deck.  I really don’t mind the nose bleed seats at all.  You can still see what’s going on, and you don’t have to be constantly on alert for getting hit in the head with a foul ball.  (Or worry about the guy that would tackle me to steal the foul ball from my possession.)
 

The game itself was mostly lousy.  It’s really too bad that the entire Mets’ starting lineup is broken (except for David Wright… poor guy).  The Astros started out well, scoring 3 runs off Mets’ starting pitcher Livan Hernandez (I know you’re now humming “Levon” by Elton John).  But then… they decided to stop trying, and ended up losing the game 8-3.  Boo.

During the 7th inning stretch, they played a Christian/Country/Rock version of “God Bless America,” which Rich and I should not have been surprised by, but we were anyway.  Also, despite the fact that the crowd was loud in general, the sing-a-long-ing of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” was lackluster at best.  Maybe they were just waiting for “Deep in the Heart of Texas,” which came on next.

 

Minute Maid Park was (as I mentioned earlier) delightfully air conditioned.  I don’t know how they manage to air condition such a gigantic building, but somehow, it works.  And we thank whoever it was that made it happen, because when they opened the roof after the game, it was uncomfortably hot within 5 minutes.  It’s amazing to see a retractable roof in action.  I don’t know how much the roof weighs, but it’s enormous, so it must take a huge amount of power to move it.  This roof was slower than the one at Chase Field (which opened completely in about 5 minutes), but it also moved differently.  This one went all the way across to one side, while the Chase roof split down the middle and moved to the ends.

Some other tidbits about Minute Maid: 

• Originally, they installed natural grass, but last year, they installed a brandy-dandy new kind of artificial surface.

• The Astrodome (which is where the Astros used to play) was the first to use any kind of artificial turf.

• Minute Maid’s original name was Enron Field… yeah, that didn’t work out too well.

• There is a train (full of oranges, of course) that chugs along the outfield wall if there is an Astros homerun (there wasn’t). 

• The Houston mascot is “Junction Jackson.”  He’s a “rabbit.”

• In center field is the Conoco Homerun Pump.  It keeps track of all the Astro homers hit since the park opened in 2000.

 

Minute Maid Park is large.  But then again, so is Texas.  It’s very strange for us, as New Englanders, to realize that 10 hours of driving doesn’t even take you all the way across Texas.  10 hours from home gets us into Virginia!!  Is everything really bigger in Texas?  Well, that remains to be seen.  I can say, however, that Texas is just plain big.

-Karyn