Houston: Minute Maid Park

Overview

Minute Maid Park is home to the Houston Astros of the National League.

It opened in 2000, following the same style as Safeco Field, which opened a year before. The stadium has a retractable roof that retracts to over the right field seats. Essentially, the field is surrounded on three sides by seats.

Minute Maid Park, formerly Enron Field, is in downtown Houston, a plus, and is next to the Union train station, which provides an interesting left field backdrop and provides the reasoning behind the home run celebration train and tracks atop the left field stadium wall. In center field is a small hill 430 feet from home plate which rarely impacts play.

The seating structure is aesthetically pleasing and the scoreboard is one of the most informative and most graphically interesting in baseball. In left field is a hand operated out of town scoreboard not far from the plate. It provides a short porch for right handed hitters. In left center the top of the outfield wall is simply marked by a yellow line.

Many of the areas are lined by social spaces and the look of the left field arches is unique.

This is a fine park. The only downside is the rather heavy looking structure. Otherwise this is one of baseball's best parks.