Minute Maid Park (also The Ballpark at Union Station, Enron Field, and Astros Field) is a ballpark in Downtown Houston, Texas, United States that opened in 2000 to house the Major League Baseball Houston Astros.
The ballpark was Houston's first retractable-roofed stadium, protecting fans and athletes from Houston's notoriously humid weather as did its predecessor, the Astrodome, but also allowing fans to enjoy outdoor baseball during favorable weather. The ballpark also features a grass field, compared to the Astrodome's artificial AstroTurf, which was generally disliked by professional baseball players. The largest entrance to the park is inside what was once Houston's Union Station, and the left-field side of the stadium features a railway 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 Coca Cola's Minute Maid's most famous product, orange juice. The ballpark has 5,095 club seats and 63 luxury suites.
Read more about Minute Maid Park: Previous Names, Features, Major Events, Ballpark Firsts, Events Other Than Baseball, Gallery
Famous quotes containing the words minute, maid and/or park:
“The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
““Though logic-choppers rule the town,
And every man and maid and boy
Has marked a distant object down,
An aimless joy is a pure joy....””
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“and the words never said,
And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead.
We sat in the car park till twenty to one
And now I’m engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.”
—Sir John Betjeman (1906–1984)