The MLB Network debuts an original hour-long documentary Tuesday (Dec 15) at 8pm (CT), “The Eighth Wonder of the World,” looking back on the building and history of the Astrodome.
I originally wrote this TRS piece October 6, 2014, but while we’re still in the Astrodome’s 50th celebratory year, I thought it would be appropriate to add some newly-remembered personal highlights (and recent Nolan Ryan reflections), and present an updated encore edition of my original article, which also features recent suggestions of the Dome’s possible future:
I’m in love with a stadium. She was born in Houston in 1965, a scant couple of miles from my birthplace, and a solid decade after me. The Houston Astrodome (nee The Harris County Domed Stadium, aka “The Eighth Wonder of the World”) emerged from the parking lot of the old Colt Stadium, where the National League expansion team Houston Colt .45s began life in 1962.
The world’s first domed, multi-purpose stadium was the brainchild of former Houston mayor Judge Roy Hofheinz, who initially conceived the concept as early as 1952. Opening in April, 1965 with an exhibition game between the Astros and the New York Yankees, the Dome was also home to the Houston Oilers NFL team from 1968 until 1997. The Oilers had previously played their home games at both Jeppesen Stadium and Rice University’s Rice Stadium for their first eight years.
Hall of Fame pitcher (and former Astro, 1980-88) Nolan Ryan counts the Dome’s atmosphere during the Astros’ 1980 and 1986 NLCS appearances as his most memorable. He also recently reflected: “The first memories that come back to me are of when they were building the Astrodome. I would go to old Colt Stadium. Back then, they wouldn’t close construction sites, so you could go to the hole and try to envision what a domed stadium would look like. For a kid coming from Alvin, TX, that was a big happening for us to watch that process going on.”
Sporting events were not the limit for the stalwart stadium. The first (of many subsequent) musical artists to appear in the Dome was Judy Garland, with The Supremes as her opening act, a week before Christmas, ’65. My mother dragged me to that show, and while (at 10 1/2) I slept through most of it, I clearly recall seeing a small woman with a big voice onstage, from my head-on-lap vantage point.
My family attended many dozens of baseball games in the late ’60s, thanks in large part to my dad’s job as a commercial time salesman for the local CBS radio affiliate, and with it, his ability to score free tickets at will. A special memory came one day in 1968, during an Astros game with the San Francisco Giants. A foul ball hit by Giants third baseman Jim Davenport floated its way in my direction behind the plate. A lady in front of me reached up from her seat to try to catch it. Missing it, the ball landed between her back and the back of her seat. I reached forward and snatched that ball as if it were the last shrimp at a wedding banquet.
My dad, brother and I would often attend games, leaving Mom happily at home. As Dad was in radio, we could access the press box with no trouble, and we had the habit of carrying a cassette tape recorder with us, and taking turns calling the game into the recorder! Dad would usually cover play-by-play, while my brother and I took turns as the color guy. The fun continued, of course, in the car on the way home, as we’d listen to what we had cleverly wrought that night in the press box.
It’s here where Dad broke out his legendary (to us) sense of wildly creative humor. We had noticed, one game, a gaggle of gals in the mezzanine who had taken more than advantage of dollar beer night. Observing them, Dad intoned into the mic, “It’s the ninth inning and the bags are loaded…..now to the action on the field!” What a way to be tucked into bed on those nights….having laughed so hard, my brother and I would have to wipe our tears of joy from our faces to avoid dampening our pillows. Thanks, Dad.
Somewhere around 1970 or ’71, I managed to finally earn my driver’s license. Having learned the short cut to the Dome from Dad, if I wasn’t at a rock concert at one of the many Houston-area venues (again, with free tickets obtained from Dad!), I’d motor my way to my Dome-away-from-home to catch an Astros game, usually by myself. I’d even take my homework to do there, if I had any.
I was there in 1978 when 45,000 Houston Oilers fans held a pep rally for the team after their loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC Championship game. “After”…”loss.” Most teams’ fans would hold a pep rally before a big game. It wouldn’t occur to most fans to congregate to “celebrate” a big loss. But, there we were in the Astrodome, proudly showing the city’s love and support, as much for the building that housed the team, as for the team who filled it each Sunday.
I even bought a tear-away home jersey of RB Ronnie Coleman in the late ‘70s, when the league outlawed those uniform tops shortly after they introduced them! The Oilers’ office held a “fire sale” of sorts to unload the suddenly unusable jerseys. Needless to say, Earl Campbell home jerseys were gone in minutes, if not seconds!
For 3 1/2 decades, the Astrodome has also hosted everything from rodeos and concerts by Elvis and the Stones to monster truck rallies and motorcycle races, political conventions and college basketball games to tennis exhibitions and Evel Knievel jumps, movie filming and boxing matches to the Mets’ Lindsey Nelson broadcasting suspended from the roof’s gondola high above second base.
Now, she sits, home to dozens of feral cats, forlorn and disheveled (having been declared unsuitable for occupancy in 2009), with politicians and corporations arguing about how to dress her up in the future, or even whether to simply tear her down. Two summers ago, Harris County Judge Ed Emmett said demolishing the Astrodome would be a “silly plan” (AP, July 19, 2014). His opposition came following a $66 million proposal by the Houston Texans NFL franchise and the venerable Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo to destroy the stadium to make way for green space (public park with athletic facilities, and a hike and bike trail) and an “Astrodome Hall of Fame.”
Emmett continued, “The Astrodome is the only building in the world that’s 350,000 square feet of column-free space. There are a lot of creative people in the world who would love to figure out ways to use the space if we just keep it and make it an option for them.”
In 2013, Houston voters turned down a $217-million plan to convert the Dome into a multi-purpose convention and sports facility, known as the “New Dome Experience.” Emmett was quick to reply that the failed referendum did not necessarily spell the end for the stadium (KHOU-TV, August 26, 2014). Also, in 2014, to match the corporate re-naming of the Houston Texans’ Reliant Stadium next door to NRG Stadium, we were instructed to start calling the then-49-year-old structure “NRG Astrodome.”
Related: Astrodome Gets New Life + Her Brave Katrina Heroism
Also in 2013, there was even an “Astrodome Reuse Design Ideas Competition,” sponsored by The Architect’s Newspaper and YKK AP. First prize went to the designers of a proposed 13,000-space AstroPark garage, a massive parking structure with inter-locking 4-lane spiral ramps connecting 18 floors of parking with Astroturf-clad columns as a nod to the past.
Second place went to the embarrassingly ridiculous Houston Ark, wherein a huge steel hull would be constructed underneath the Astrodome, so if Galveston Bay storm surge ever crept into the city during a hurricane, the stadium would manage to float above the submerged skyscrapers! Of course, volumes from the city libraries would be stored there, as well as specimens from Houston museums, and even the Houston Zoo!
In the spring of 2015, a report surfaced that The Urban Land Institute had put a price tag of $242 million to repurpose the Dome for a park and commercial space.
Well, dear Astrodome, however they may end up dressing you, and whatever they may end up calling you, and having you do, you easily had as much positive influence on my upbringing as anything or anyone else in my life, and I know I’m far from being alone in that assessment.
To go from “The Eighth Wonder” to an eyesore is painful to see, and worthy of more than just a couple of tears.
Stay classy, ole girl, and hang in there. By the way, you should know that you had me at “Play Ball!”
Related: Requiem Mound: Astros Ditch Tal’s Hill
Related: Brian McTaggart’s (MLB.com) “Astrodome’s Top 12 Moments”