Minute Maid Park

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Minute Maid Park is a baseball stadium in Houston, Texas that opened in 2000 to house the Houston Astros.

Capacity 40,950

Opened March 30th 2000

Owner Harris County-Houston Sports Authority

Cost $250 million

Architect HOK Sport

The ballpark was Houston’s first retractable-roofed stadium, protecting fans and athletes from Houston’s notoriously humid weather like its predecessor, the Astrodome, but allowing fans to also enjoy outdoor baseball, something they couldn’t enjoy in the Astrodome. Its largest entrance is inside what was once Houston’s Union Station, and the left-field side of the stadium features a train as homage to the site’s history. The train moves along a track on top of the length of the exterior wall beyond left field whenever an Astros player hits a home run, or when the Astros win a game (the engine’s tender, traditionally used to carry coal, is filled with giant oranges in tribute to Minute Maid’s most famous product, orange juice).

The ballpark was first christened as Enron Field on April 9, 1999, with naming rights sold to the Houston energy corporation. Astros management faced a public relations nightmare when the energy corporation went bankrupt in the midst of one of the biggest business scandals in American history in 2001, and they bought back the remainder of Enron’s thirty years of naming rights for $2.1 million, rechristening the ballpark as Astros Field on February 7, 2002. On June 5, 2002 Houston-based Minute Maid, the fruit-juice subsidiary of Coca-Cola, acquired the naming rights to the stadium.

During its days as Enron Field, it was also dubbed “Ten-Run” or “Home Run” Field due to its cozy left-field dimensions. In keeping with this theme while paying homage to its current sponsor, the nickname “The Juice Box” is sometimes heard today.

The stadium is known for being particularly hitter-friendly down the lines, especially in left field where it is only 315 ft (96 m) to the Crawford Boxes, though the wall there is 19 feet tall. Conversely, it is quite difficult to hit a ball out in center field, though fielding is a challenge there as well, due to the 30-degree steep up-sloped grade, known as Tal’s Hill, for team president Tal Smith, an element taken from Crosley Field and other historic ballparks (in a bit of gallows humor, the hill is also known as the “Grassy Knoll”), and the flagpole in play, an element taken from Yankee Stadium and Tiger Stadium among others. The difference is that the Crosley Field “terrace” was necessitated by the difference in elevation between field level and street level, while Tal’s Hill is purely decorative. Both structures have been held in equal disdain by the respective outfielders that have had to patrol those areas.

A concourse above Tal’s Hill features the “Conoco Home Run Porch” in left-center field that is actually over the field of play, and features a classic gasoline pump that displays the total number of Astros home runs hit since the park opened.

(source .. wikipedia) reproduced under GFDL

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