Unspecified/General

In downtown Houston just south of the historic Union Station, Minute Maid Park is the home stadium of the Houston Astros of Major League Baseball and one of the most distinctive ballparks in the league. The 41,000-seat venue opened in March 2000 as Enron Field at a cost of around 250 million dollars, with the structure's defining feature a retractable roof of 50,000 tons that can close in just twelve minutes to shield the playing field from the city's notorious summer heat, humidity and afternoon thunderstorms. The park's architecture is rich in references to Houston history. The historic Union Station, built in 1911 and disused for decades, was incorporated into the stadium's main concourse and now serves as an elegant brick entrance facade housing the team's administrative offices and a sports museum. The famous Crawford Boxes seats above the unusually short 315-foot left-field porch reward batters with one of the easiest home runs in the major leagues, while the deepest part of the outfield in centre once contained a quirky 90-foot hill known as Tal's Hill (named for the team's president emeritus Tal Smith), removed in 2017 along with its in-play flagpole. The Astros, founded in 1962 as the Colt 45s and renamed in 1965, won their first World Series at the ballpark in November 2017 and a second championship in 2022, both events drawing enormous crowds and confirming the venue's standing as one of the most successful relatively modern ballparks in the major leagues. The retractable roof is the centrepiece of the ballpark's engineering. The three-panel roof slides on a series of giant railroad tracks set 240 feet above the field on three sets of supporting steel trusses, with the rooftop garden visible from much of the downtown skyline. Beyond Astros games, the park hosts occasional concerts, monster-truck rallies and college football games. Ballpark tours run on most non-game days and cover the dugouts, press box, executive suites and the Union Station concourse.

Type: Stadium / Arena

Address: 501 Crawford Street, Houston, TX, United States

Telephone: 713-259-8000

Website: mlb.com/astros/ballpark

Capacity: 41168

Opening Date: 30/03/2000