Houston baseball has come a long way from humble origin

By Stan Caldwell

stanmansportsfan.com

This Memorial Day weekend had a distinct bittersweet flavor to it.

I spent much of it visiting my family in Texas, where my parents have lived since my father retired from the petroleum refining business in the early 1990s.

They built a beautiful house on five acres of land that backs onto one of the many bayous that run through the Houston area, and have enjoyed a long, fruitful retirement.

But time waits for no one, and my mom and dad – though still relatively healthy and of fairly sound minds at 88 and 87, respectively – have gotten to the point where they are not physically able to keep the house up in the manner it deserves.

So, they recently sold the house and are preparing to move into some sort of retirement community. This past weekend was a chance to fire up the grill, and enjoy good friends and good food one last time in a celebratory fashion.

Part of the weekend’s festivities was a trip with my brother to Minute Maid Park to see the Houston Astros in action, on this occasion against the Chicago White Sox. He was able to score great seats on the lower level about 25 rows up right behind the first-base line.

Watching the Astros play was a chance to do some reminiscing about our beginnings as sports fans, because some of our earliest memories were of my father taking us boys to see what was then the new Houston team in the National League.

They started life in 1962 as the Colt 45s, named for the weapon that was said to, “make all men equal,” in the Old West, and they played in the former minor-league park that had been expanded and spruced up  somewhat to make it big-league worthy.

While we battled the mosquitoes and the heat, and enjoyed baseball, we watched the future under construction well beyond the center field fence at the old Colts Stadium.

The Houston Astrodome was going to be the world’s first indoor stadium, “the Eighth Wonder of the World,” they called it in promotional literature.

It didn’t matter to me; I was delighted to be watching major league baseball in person. More importantly, it was a bonding experience with my father and my brother – Kevin and I have been partners in crime since the beginning, and baseball has been a big part of our relationship.

The Colt 45s were the first team I followed, and even though they weren’t very good, they were better than their expansion brethren, the woeful New York Mets. We also got to see the career beginnings of a couple of very good players in Rusty Staub and Jim Wynn.

Staub would go on to play some 20 seasons for several teams – the Expos, the Mets and Tigers among them – and he was a fan favorite everywhere he played. Wynn, all 5-feet, 8-inches of him, was known as the Toy Cannon, for his big booming bat.

We also saw a number of famous big-leaguers of the day among the visiting teams that came through town. I particularly remember that we were there for Stan Musial Day, when the great Cardinals’ Hall of Famer made his farewell tour through the National League.

A great player named Stan got my attention right quick, and when we moved to Kansas in the summer of 1964, I took up the flag of the St. Louis team, since that was whose games were on local radio in Wichita, not far from the town to which we had moved.

Over the years, I’ve been a fan of the Cardinals, then the Royals, where we saw some epic games during the team’s heyday in the mid-to-late ‘70s.

I took up with the Braves when I moved to Hattiesburg, more so when they started winning big in the ‘90s, and they are still probably the team I keep up with most, since they’re the team that appears most regularly on regional cable channels.

But I’ve always had a special place for the Astros, even though they weren’t the Astros when I followed them.

Baseball in Houston has had a very up and down trajectory over the years, with a few great moments and a few more bad moments.

The Astros were long defined by their stadium, the Astrodome, but it started to get a little rundown, and in 2001 the team moved to a new stadium in downtown Houston.

And while it hurts a little to see the old ‘Dome sitting derelict, there is no doubt that the move to the new building has done wonders for the franchise.

Whereas the Dome sat in the middle of a parking lot just off the freeway, Minute Maid Park has spurred a revival in downtown Houston, with shops, restaurants and bars all within walking distance of the ballpark.

In recent seasons, the stadium has gotten a team worthy of its surroundings. The Astros moved to the American League in 2013, and in recent seasons some new home-grown talent has brought the Astros into baseball’s elite.

After three straight seasons (2011-13) in which they lost 106, 107 and 111 games, the Astros finished second in the AL West in 2015, beat the Yankees in the Wild-Card Game and lost to eventual world champion Kansas City in the AL Division Series.

In 2017, Houston won 101 games then knocked out Boston in the ALDS, clipped the Yankees in seven games in the American League Championship Series and won their first World Series title with a Game 7 victory over the Dodgers.

Last season, Houston won a team-record 103 games, but after a three-game sweep of Cleveland in the Division Series, the Astros lost to the Red Sox in the ALCS in five games, part of Boston’s march to another championship.

Through it all, the Astros have been Houston’s team in a way that no other franchise in no other sport can boast.

Yes, Texas is football-first country, but Houston has had a checkered past with pro football, having been abandoned by their beloved Oilers in the late 1990s. While the Texans have brought NFL football back to Houston in a large new stadium next door to the Astrodome, it’s not the same.

And, besides, even the Oilers – as the Texans still do – had to share the city’s football loyalty with the Dallas Cowboys, who have a large following in the area.

That is not the case with baseball. In baseball, the Astros rule, and they are considered the No. 1 team in media coverage, ahead of the Texans (or Cowboys), the Rockets of the NBA and the many Texas college teams that have fans spread throughout the area.

On an otherwise routine Thursday night, the Astros drew a crowd of some 26,000 for the White Sox, a slightly-under .500 team without much going for them.

Alas, the White Sox didn’t give the crowd much to cheer about as their pitcher, right-hander Lucas Giolito, tossed a four-hit, complete-game shutout, winning 4-0.

Still, the soda was nice and cold, the foot-long chili dog was outstanding and the company, me and my little brother (younger by 23 months), couldn’t have been better.

And the Astros are still leading the AL West by a comfortable margin, and they took two of three games from the Red Sox, who followed Chicago into Minute Maid Park for a weekend series.

Houston baseball has indeed come a long way from sitting in those rickety center field bleachers fighting mosquitos with my dad and my brother.

It made an emotional weekend for memories that much sweeter as my family faces a new reality coming over the horizon.

Stan Caldwell is a 35-year veteran sports writer in the Hattiesburg area, and most recently served as sports information director at Pearl River Community College in Mississippi.