8 Great Astrodome Moments

Monday, January 26, 2004

NFL
Eight moments in the Astrodome


Eight wondrous events at the Astrodome, known as the Eighth Wonder of the World when it was built in 1965 (and originally known as the Harris County Domed Stadium):

April 9, 1965: With President Lyndon B. Johnson in attendance, the Astrodome opened with an exhibition baseball game between the Houston Astros and the New York Yankees. Mickey Mantle hit the first home run in the dome, but the Astros won 2-1 in 12 innings. The Astrodome field was natural grass. Translucent panels in the roof allowed enough sun in to help the grass grow. Unfortunately, they also allowed enough sun in to make catching fly balls in the outfield a death-defying adventure. Ten days later, many of the panels were painted to eliminate the glare. Shortly thereafter, the grass started to die, inspiring another invention — AstroTurf, which was installed for the 1966 season.

Jan. 20, 1968: Elvin Hayes scored 39 points, leading No. 2 Houston to a 71-69 win over Lew Alcindor and No. 1 UCLA in the first nationally televised college basketball game. A record basketball crowd of 52,693 watched Houston end UCLA's 47-game winning streak.

Feb. 27-March 1, 1970: Elvis Presley drew more than 200,000 fans to six shows (two a day) in a three-day stand. All six shows started with "All Shook Up" and ended with an instrumental version of "Love Me Tender."

Jan. 8, 1971: More than 41,000 watched Evel Knievel set a world indoor motorcycle record by jumping 13 cars. Less than four months earlier, he had cleared 13 cars outside in Seattle.

Sept. 20, 1973: The Battle of the Sexes. Bobby Riggs, the 1939 Wimbledon champion, challenged Billie Jean King to a match that was seen by 30,472 at the Astrodome (record attendance for a tennis match) and 50 million television viewers. Riggs was a 5-to-2 favorite in the bizarre, carnival-style event, but King was an easy winner, 6-4, 6-3, 6-3.

Nov. 20, 1978: The Houston Oilers beat the Miami Dolphins 35-30 in a "Monday Night Football game" that Howard Cosell called "the greatest football game I have ever broadcast." Rookie running back Earl Campbell ran for 199 yards and four touchdowns, as a sellout crowd waving light blue Oilers pompoms went nuts.

Sept. 25, 1986: Mike Scott was a mediocre pitcher until Roger Craig taught him the split-fingered fastball. In 1986, Scott won the National League Cy Young award, and on this date he clinched the NL West title by pitching a no-hitter — against the San Francisco Giants, managed by Roger Craig.

Oct. 15, 1986: The Mets advanced to the World Series with a 16-inning, 7-6 win over the Astros in the longest playoff game in history. The Astros were three outs away from forcing Game 7, but the Mets scored three runs in the ninth to send the game to extra innings. The Mets took a 4-3 lead in the 14th, but Billy Hatcher hit a home run in the bottom of the 14th to tie it. The Mets scored three runs in the top of the 16th, but again the Astros rallied, scoring two runs and putting runners at first and third. But Jesse Orosco struck out Kevin Bass to end what many call the best playoff game ever played.

— Bill Reader

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/sports/2001843671_astrodomecharts26.html

 

Reliant Stadium, left, which will host the Super Bowl on Sunday, dwarfs the Houston Astrodome, right, popularly known as "The Eighth Wonder of the World."

 

Les Carpenter / Times staff columnist
Astrodome: futuristic to forgotten

HOUSTON — When they first built this place — a Jetsons world bursting from the asphalt — it was as if they had brought space down to earth. The Astrodome opened under 9-½ acres of glass roofing and air-conditioned comfort, and it seemed sports would never be the same.

"It reminds me of what my first ride would be like in a flying saucer," Mickey Mantle said after he hit the building's first home run in a 1965 exhibition game.

For a while, it was. Everything about the Astrodome made the rest of the world instantly obsolete. Giant scoreboards flashed electronic images of cowboys with six-shooters, men dressed in space suits came out to tend to the infield between innings and a tipsy bar in the stadium club toppled from side to side while magnets held drinks in place.

After the glare from the glass roof made catching fly balls impossible, the panels were glazed, which cut the glare but killed the grass. This led to the invention of a plastic grass called AstroTurf, which in turn made possible a long line of civic atrocities like the Metrodome, Tropicana Field and, regrettably, the Kingdome.

Four decades later, the biggest game of the year comes to Houston, and the building that became known as "The Eighth Wonder of the World" sits dark on the Texas prairie, already a dowdy eyesore from an intergalactic fantasy. Towering beside it stands the latest in stadium technology, Reliant Park, with a sliding roof and plates of grass that can be moved in and out like pieces of a puzzle.

It's as if the world forgot the Astrodome. Most of the time the great doors aren't even opened. There are occasional high-school baseball and football playoff games played before mostly-empty stands, but all the big events go to Reliant Stadium now. The Rolling Stones played the new stadium last January. The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo moved over the following month.

This week, there will be a daily parade of events and sideshows at Reliant and on the 300 acres of parking lots that surround the stadiums. Only one, the NFL commissioner's gala, will be held in the Astrodome. Otherwise the dome might as well not even exist.

The stadium that changed the world has become a weathered relic you'd find at a garage sale, a peeling ashtray left over from the World's Fair. Which leaves Houston with every municipality's worst nightmare: a useless public building so filled with history it can't possibly be destroyed.

"The usage is pretty sparse," says Willie Loston, the executive director of the Harris County Sports and Convention Corporation. "But there is no serious consideration to demolishing the building or taking it out of use."

Instead they are trying to give it a new life. The best option right now is to turn the Astrodome into a space theme park by transforming the floor into a futuristic Disneyland with rides and exhibits that should make visitors feel like they've been whisked to another planet. The stands would be gutted and replaced by a gleaming new hotel with rooms that would look out on the interplanetary frenzy below. Could a stadium hope for a better fate?

"I think the overriding public support is to keep the building in generally its current configuration," Loston says. "The larger hues and cries have come from people who want to keep it. Of course they haven't gone to the test of trying to keep a public building that doesn't produce revenue."

Which means that if the Astroplayland idea falls through, the Astrodome might have to be fitted for dynamite.

This thought dismays Loston, whose office looks out on the Astrodome.

"It is still, quite candidly, awe-inspiring to go into the building," he says. "To go down onto the floor and kind of take in the enormity of the structure, it is still pretty amazing."

Tear down the Astrodome? They can't tear down the Astrodome. Maybe it has served its best use. Maybe the rats and cats that used to patrol its corridors are the only ones who enjoy the great, glass shell out on Interstate 610 anymore. But the thought of imploding the dome that spawned some of the worst architecture in our history is unimaginable.

Like "Beverly Hillbillies" reruns, Formica counters and the Gabor sisters, some things from mid-century America should be preserved so as not to repeat the same mistakes again. And while the Astrodome might have given us all that we now see as bad, it can't be sent off in a cloud of dust.

Once, the Astrodome dared to let America dream. The man who drove its construction, Judge Roy Hofheinz, loved the stadium so much he built his home there, above right field. Who could blow it up now, before it's even 40 years old?

The Super Bowl has come to town, and the building that put Houston on the map is just a stubby obstacle on the way to the show.