The Astrodome
Friday Morning
June 12, 2015
It’s not like the old days. of course, but the run of special times at the Astrodome plays on.
Last year, we were among those who purchased a pair of Astrodome seats in the 2014 first public sale. Then, on June 4, 2015, Bob Dorrill and I went to the Astrodome to pick up two special stadium seats for Jimmy Wynn. And earlier, at the April 9, 2015 50th Anniversary Party to celebrate the Houston Astros first game of all time in the then brand new Astrodome, and against Mickey Mantle and the New York Yankees, no less, we were among the approximate 30,000 fans who flocked to the Astrodome too see again and pay homage to the “old girl” we all know better as “The Eighth Wonder of the World.”
Front: Jimmy and Marie Wynn
Back: Steve Archer & Shawn Bouley
Astrodome Seat Stand Sale
June 12, 2015
June 12, 2015 was a special morning we spent with Jimmy and Marie Wynn at the Dome Seat Stand Sale conducted by Steve Archer of Philadelphia and ably assisted by NRG Properties Manager Shawn Bouley. Jimmy and I were even allowed to sell quite a few copies of our “Toy Cannon” book to a very appreciative audience – and Steve and Shawn did everything they could to make us all feel welcomed. It was great just watching the fans approaching Jimmy and sharing their memories of him. – And almost all of them mentioned one of his monster homers, especially the ball that he launched into the gold seat section in high left field so long ago.
But there have been other memories in months – and some new ugly realizations.
April 9, 2015 was a bittersweet beautiful day. I got the impression from crowd chatter that most people had come that day that included every thought and emotion imaginable in the life space that exists between “hello” and “goodbye”. A good many of us, I think, or project, take your pick, approached the party as a conveniently unexpected encounter opportunity to run into, one more time, that special young love that was lost to our reach so many years ago. How would it be to see the Astrodome up closes again, We knew going in that her youthful electricity was now spent, but, let’s be fair. She’s fared no worse than many of us to the physical ravages of aging.
To make our experience with being around the Dome in the presence of so many others of good spirit, and that image especially includes all the parents of young children who were all trying to use the gathering as a time to try and teach their kids what “the great hall that changed the game of ball” once was like, the atmosphere was one of hello to an old love that never really went away. She simply got chewed up by the politics of abandonment that ensued from the gut-wounding demands for more seats by Bud Adams of the NFL Oilers. Adams got his extra seats, but it cost the Astrodome its magical scoreboard and soured the inner sense of uniqueness that even the grand old Dome had over all the other multipurpose venues she prototyped in her first decade of life. And, even after all that concession to one man’s greed, Adams still abandoned Houston and the Dome, taking his cookies to Nashville – and, sadly, now leaving Drayton McLane with an aesthetic dislike for the boring new look of the Dome’s interior that now nicely leveraged our fear of also losing the MLB Astros to relocation too – unless public monies could be used to build a new retro-looking baseball park downtown.
McLane got his wish, but he didn’t really do this to us. A lot us supported the idea of a venue that looked more like the baseball park of our nascent dreams. We too had become bored with the sameness look of the Dome, but that was bound to happen over time with age and familiarity. The stationary roof guaranteed that after thirty years of regular use that all games would come to look alike with controlled indoor lighting and no variable weather to break the haze of “same look/different day” that over time had gone from excitement to boredom.
The Astrodome didn’t need abandonment in the latter years of the 20th century. She needed the equivalent of a mid-life makeover. She had reached the age of needing a facelift beyond the flowers that Mr. McLane, to his credit, had tried to use as bright spots on the dull walls of a drab interior. It just wasn’t enough. And the loss of the great scoreboard for Mr. Adams’ extra seats most probably was the dagger to the heart of the our aging beauty. Then it was all of us who acted in support of building what is now Minute Maid Park that became contributors to dire straits that is the Astrodome’s current state of dilapidation. And that last sweep includes team owners, our local governing bodies, special business interest groups – and us fans too.
All of us – we allowed the construction of the new baseball park without insisting upon an Astros exit plan that would have spelled out a proactive business agenda for what then would become of the Astrdome. Never happened. We all jumped away to our new ballpark like kids dropping an old toy for the new and shiny one. Maybe I’m wrong, but I can’t remember a single article or community discussion of any consequence about the future of the dome back in 1998-99. And we missed our best shot at a plan that could have given her an earlier, full to partial renewal – either by saying goodbye to Mr. Adams before we allowed him to force the loss of our scoreboard – or in conjunction with the Astros’ plan to move downtown. We just didn’t do it.
Maybe this is what that one older stranger I heard muttering really meant when I passed him as he stood, facing the dome with arms folding, staring at the Dome, shaking his head – and muttering to himself.
“This never should have happened,” the man said into the wind, without breaking the stillness of his cocentration .
