Well, summer is here! It’s freaking hot and I’m doing my best not to fry. I’ve even been wearing sunscreen while I’m sitting in the car on these long drives. Though I have to say I’m getting better at them. I did the 300-something miles from Arlington to Houston practically in my sleep. I managed to stay awake by playing a new fun game. I called it “field or prison” and I still wasn’t any good at it by the time I left the state. Basically, when you see some light stanchions in the distance or over the crest of a hill you guess whether they are lights for high school baseball/football fields or for a prison. It’s REALLY hard and often one would be on one side of the highway and one would be on the other! I dunno, it kept me awake and entertained as there are a lot of both in Texas.
Houston was nice enough. I drove into the city a few hours early to check out the downtown area. I had lunch in a local pub and a guy bought me my first round because I was wearing my Sox hat. “Red Sox Nation!” he exclaimed. Too bad the beer only cost $1.50 because it was a pregame special. There were a lot of Cubs fans roaming around the city. I saw a bunch of them in Denver too. As a fan base, they seem to travel very well. I was actually really excited to see Minute Maid Park. On TV it looks really cool so maybe my hopes were a bit too high but, on the whole, it didn’t offer too much. The game ended up being close until the end and the fans and some other intangibles made up for what was a pretty lackluster building.
Game Notes:
The first thing I noticed upon arriving at the park was the train. This is an actual full size train with a big burly conductor guy dressed in overalls who comes out and waves a towel. If an Astro hits a home run he drives the train about 50 yards on a track and blows the whistle and makes smoke come out of the engine area and smoke stack. Unfortunately no Astros hit a homerun during the game but we still got to see the train show during pregame ceremonies. This is the same train, other side of the wall.
There are two other things I’d like to point out about this picture. First, see the Citgo sign above the seating area and above even the train (by the way, they may be around but I didn’t see a single Citgo in Texas)? Well, Carlos Lee hit that sign during BP. That’s DISGUSTING! I have no idea how far that ball would have gone but that is a mammoth shot; definitely well over the Monster Seats at Fenway. The other thing I thought was funny is the “Eat More Fowl” pole in left field (as well as one in right). We all can share a laugh over the Chick-Fil-A ads where the cows tell you to eat more “chikin.” But it turns out if you get seats behind these poles your view is severely hindered. That spells fun for the rest of us, but not for those unlucky few. I should also note that if either of those poles gets hit, fans can redeem their ticket stub for a free sandwich the next day at participating Houston area Chick-Fil-A locations.
Walking around the concession area of Minute Maid Park was pretty much a waste of time. The vendors had a distinct southwestern feel and offered the food to match but nothing looked appealing. There was no variety, no special deals, nothing new. **Side note: I realize that as I continue on this journey more and more parks are going to start looking the same and offering the same food, souvenirs, etc. But I had seen 9 parks before Petco and they still were able to completely blow me away. I’m not going to dock a stadium points just because I happened to see garlic fries somewhere else first, but I’d still like to see them play up their own theme where possible. ** OK, now that that’s cleared up, Minute Maid did have the most unique condiment offerings I’ve seen. As I’ve mentioned, most stadiums do the ketchup, mustard, relish and onions to top one’s purchase. The Astros provided all of the regulars plus buckets of cilantro, pickles (high point!), salsa and jalepenos. That was a nice touch.
I thought an interesting note was the dearth of Roger Clemens references and the prevalence of Biggio/Bagwell paraphernalia. Yes, Roger only pitched for them a few seasons and blew them off for his “final” season in New York but you really would be hard pressed to find anything Clemens around the park. I thought he would have been kind of like the “hometown hero” or “favorite son” and at least given a board somewhere. Maybe his recent media exposure has something to do with this?? Meanwhile, Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell each have huge facades dedicated to their accomplishments and bronze statues out in front of the park.
And who can forget everyon's favorite fireballer??
Moving on. Minute Maid Park is home to the most unique center field in the majors. There is an incline that is in play and I’ve never understood how this isn’t a danger to the players. Think back to when you were a kid. If you were running around on a field and not looking and all of a sudden you started up an incline, didn’t that ever trip you up or really throw off your balance? “Uh, no Matt, I don’t know what you’re talking about. These are world class athletes who can deal with a little adversity now and then.” Yeah, well maybe I’m an unathletic shmuck and ya’ll can go jump in a lake. Here’s center field.
Right near the hill in the sun you can see some table tops. They are seating for a local restaurant and on one side of them they have the hill and on the other is the bullpen. They’re actually a pretty good vantage to catch the game. I went down and took some pictures during BP but the ushers (and this was park wide) were very concerned that I only take a few photos and return to my section. Even the PA announcer at the beginning of the game warned fans to be prepared to show their ticket at ALL times when returning to their seats. That was kind of a buzz kill. This wasn’t always the case but the ushers were certainly more “in my business” at Minute Maid Park than at other recent venues.
Apropos of nothing: This was another stadium with a retractable roof but because the entire left field wall was glass, the sun shone through and it hardly felt like we were indoors; I saw the 2nd inside the park home run of my trip during this game; the Park had a scoreboard and TV in each of the lower sections (like San Diego) but the scoreboard provided little information and the TVs were not HD; the train locomotive carried one car which was full of pumpkins, I have no idea the significance of those pumpkins. Must be time to move on to the high points.
High Points:
-The following was funny for a few different reasons. The Sterling High School Choir performed the national anthem before the game. As they were walking out from right field they had to navigate Astros players warming up. Well, two of them were engaged in long toss and as the kids walked in between them the players continued to launch throws back and forth. I actually caught the ball midflight, I don’t know if you can see it but it’s pretty much straight south of the State Farm logo.
The other thing about this group of kids was their absolutely unexpected singing voices. So far on this trip Texans have had the thickest and most distinct accents of anywhere else. You haven’t heard a southern accent until you’ve spent some time in rural Texas. Side note, when I was in the western part of the state waiting in line at a Super 8 there was a fully decked out cowboy getting extremely angry with the hotel person who wouldn’t take his coupon. He kept calling it “booo-shiit” as in “this is booo-shiit.” I did my best to hide my grin :-) Anyway, when these kids opened up the anthem it was like they had just been flown over direct from Heathrow. A British sounding national anthem sung by Texas high schoolers…truly a site to behold!
-Texas is proud. It was funnier at the time but now that I think of it, we must look just as silly when belting out Sweet Caroline with all of its “so good, so good” and whathaveyou. But…to watch 32,000 strong belt out and clap along with “Deep in the Heart of Texas” was also some kind of site to see.
-The aforementioned annoying ushers spent half their time checking tickets and the other half wiping bird shit off the seats. There were so many pigeons flying around during the game and during the day they leave the roof open so the seats are rather vulnerable to attack.
-This was the most entertaining part of the game for me. Two rows down from me a kid was being obnoxiously drunk and yelling for the first few innings of the game. Well, he promptly passed out around the early part of the 5th inning.
He was with a group of about 6-7 friends and once they realized he was down for the count they did the noble thing and switched sections. They were so quiet and careful not to wake him as they left and were giggling as they looked down at him for the next 10 minutes. Then 20 minutes passed and they kind of lost interest. Fast forward THREE innings and the kid is still passed out! It was the top of the 8th when he FINALLY woke up. Of course he was dazed, bewildered and quite embarrassed while stumbling around asking people if they knew where his friends were. The whole section knew but we were also in on the joke so nobody spoke up. Finally one of the kids from his group shouted his name and he walked sheepishly up to them. Kept us all quite entertained though!
-The scoreboard was both friend and foe during this game. I found this to be rather cute.
This guy is hitting .192 for the season and they're singing the praises of his 3 game hitting streak. Come on! HE GOT 4 HITS IN 3 GAMES! If you want to talk about a hitting streak, you talk about this guy!
Holy crap, huh?
Low Points:
-Fans again were far too concerned with finding their correct seats. I know the ushers were all over you about the tickets but once you get up into a nearly empty section, does it really matter? I stayed far enough away from everyone in this game that I wasn’t kicked out but time and again I saw people go to a section and kick out the 1 or 2 people who were in their seats, even though the rest of the rows around them were barren. Just burns mah britches, ya hear?
-I couldn’t figure it out at first and initially thought it was just some annoying kids in the outfield but prior to the game there was this incessant whistle blowing made far worse by the indoor acoustics. Eventually I realized it was the pep squad. Instead of yelling at people and cheering they just looked at them, pointed and blew their whistles. There were 6 of them, each with their own whistle, so whenever they were on the field it was headache time.
-I wanted to kill the scoreboard guy when he put this up.
There I was, following diligently along on my blackberry when this sign flashes on the board. I thought Lester was done right there with that stupid jinx but luckily our boy pulled it off and an innocent scoreboard operators life was spared. For now…
-There was a general apathy amongst the fans. People would cheer a hit or a run but they weren’t what I would consider “into the game.” There were half as many people in Oakland and they made it seem like the place was packed. That’s how to be “into a game.”
-I may have gotten a little worked up in the last post about the Astros mascot being a F@%*^!*G bunny. Well, it turns out his name is something Jackrabbit. Fine, there are jackrabbits in Texas, whatever. It still doesn’t make it OK that they have a bunny for a mascot.
-For the first time on my trip I hit a pretty bad traffic situation leaving the game. Karen wasn’t quite sure how to get me out of it and I killed about a half an hour just idling on my way to the highway. That sucked.
Overall Grade: B-
Game Stats:
Teams: Astros vs. Cubs
Final Score: 7-2 Cubs
WP: Ted Lilly
LP: Brian Moehler
Time: 3:19
Announced Attendance: 32,458
Ticket Price: $7.00
Parking Price: $6.00
Trip Stats:
Home team record: 8-5
Best Anthem: Tropicana Field
Miles Driven: 5157
States Visited: 9
Beds slept in: 17
Highest Gas PPG: $4.19
Next Stop: Toronto Blue Jays
Favorite Park: Petco Park (Padres)
Stadium Grades:
Marlins: D
Rays: B
Braves: B-
Rockies: B+
Mariners: B
Giants: A-
Athletics: C
Angels: B-
Dodgers: B+
Padres: A
Diamondbacks: B
Rangers: B-
Astros: B-
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