April 9, 1965: The Astrodome Opens

April 9, 1965, 60 years ago: The Astrodome opens in Houston, Texas, with an exhibition game between the Houston Astros and the defending American League Champions, the New York Yankees.

The Astros had begun play in the National League in 1962, as the Houston Colt .45s. Colt Stadium was never meant to be more than a stopgap facility until the Harris County Domed Stadium could open. It was necessary, due to not just Houston's heat and humidity, but mosquitoes: Los Angeles Dodger pitcher Sandy Koufax said, "Some of those bugs were twin-engine jobs."

The dome was the brainchild of the team's owner, Roy Hofheinz, a State Representative from 1934 to 1936, a Harris County Judge from 1936 to 1944, and Mayor from 1953 to 1955. Despite being Mayor of the State's largest city, he was known as "Judge Hofheinz" for the rest of his life.

It was the 1st roofed stadium in the modern world, seating 46,000 for baseball and 50,000 for football. Much of where the outfield's upper deck would have gone was occupied instead by what was then the world's largest and most active scoreboard. Houston proclaimed the stadium "The Eighth Wonder of the World."

They couldn't have chosen a better opponent: The Yankees had won 29 of the last 44 Pennants, and had such stars as Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Roger Maris and Joe Pepitone. And, sure enough, following a ceremonial first ball thrown out by Texas' own Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th and current President of the United States, Mantle hit the dome's 1st home run in the 4th inning.

But the Astros tied the game with a fielder's choice in the 6th. With 2 out in the 7th, Johnny Blanchard doubled, and Yankee pitcher Mel Stottlemyre helped his own cause with a hit. But Jimmy Wynn, known as the Toy Cannon because he wasn't very tall but was very strong, threw Blanchard out at the plate.

The game went to extra innings. In the bottom of the 12th, new Yankee manager Johnny Keane sent Pete Mikkelsen out to pitch. Wynn beat out an infield single, and stole 2nd. Bob Lillis and Ron Brand struck out. Astro manager Luman Harris sent up the Astros' best-known player, former Chicago White Sox superstar Nellie Fox. He looped a hit over Yankee shortstop Tony Kubek, and the Astros had won, 2-1.

Three days later, on April 12, 1965, the 1st game at the Astrodome that counted was played. The Astros lost to the Philadelphia Phillies, 2-0. Dick Allen hit the 1st home run.

The dome's skylights made it hard for fielders to see the ball. So the lights were painted over. Then the grass died. For the 1966 season, a plastic grass made by the Monsanto Corporation was installed. Astroturf was born. The Dark Ages had begun.

Koufax saw some of the bounces the ball took on it, and said, "I was one of those guys who pitched without a cup. I wouldn't do it on this stuff." And Allen, who trained racehorses, said, "If a horse can't eat it, I don't want to play on it." And that was before football fans began to see what Astroturf did to the human knee.

The Astros would reach the Playoffs in 1980, 1981, 1986, 1997, 1998 and 1999; and host the All-Star Game in 1968 and 1986, before moving into what would a new stadium in 2000, known first as Enron Field, and then, after the collapse of Enron, it became Minute Maid Park in 2002, and now Daikin Park in 2025.

The University of Houston football team moved into the Astrodome for the 1965 season, and won the Southwest Conference while playing there in 1976, 1978, 1979 and 1984, and the Conference USA title in 1996. The dome hosted the Bluebonnet Bowl from 1968 to 1987, and the Houston Bowl in 2000 and 2001.

The dome hosted pro football with the Oilers, who started in the the AFL and moved in for 1968, and into the NFL in 1970, until 1996 when they moved to Tennessee; the original version of the Houston Texans, in the World Football League in 1974; and the Houston Gamblers, in the United States Football League in 1984 and 1985.

It hosted some home games of the NBA's Houston Rockets from 1971 to 1975. It hosted the original North American Soccer League, with the Houston Stars in 1967 and 1968; and the Houston Hurricane in 1978, 1979 and 1980. It hosted the NCAA Final Four in 1971, with UCLA winning.

And it hosted such stunt events as college basketball's Houston vs. UCLA "Game of the Century" in 1968, and tennis' "Battle of the Sexes" where Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in 1973. Elvis Presley sang there in 1970 and 1974. (The Beatles could have played there on their 1965 and 1966 tours, but didn't.) It hosted Selena Quintanilla-Perez's last concert in 1995, and Jennifer Lopez's recreation of it for the 1997 film Selena.

Muhammad Ali defended the Heavyweight Championship of the World there, against Cleveland Williams in 1966 and Ernie Terrell in 1967. Evel Knievel jumped over 13 cars inside on back-to-back nights in 1971, but canceled a plan to jump over the dome entirely. It also hosted the 1992 Republican Convention, a disgusting festival of bigotry that presaged the Trump era.

But the building hosted only the 1 Final Four, and never hosted a Super Bowl: When Houston hosted Super Bowl VIII in 1974, it was held at Rice University Stadium, because it then had 10,000 more seats.

And the teams began to leave. An expansion of the stadium to 54,370 for baseball and 62,439 for football, scaling back the famous scoreboard, didn't help. Oilers owner Bud Adams hated the lease, almost moved the team to Jacksonville, and finally did move it to Tennessee after 1996. At that point, UH moved back to an on-campus facility. And when Major League Soccer added the Houston Dynamo, they groundshared with UH.

The dome housed thousands of evacuees from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. But Reliant Stadium, now NRG Stadium, opened next-door in 2002, to host the Texans, and it has hosted the Super Bowl and the Final Four.

Today, the Astrodome is still the most famous building in the State of Texas, but it now hosts nothing. "The Eighth Wonder of the World" has seen its time come and go. Since the SkyDome (now the Rogers Centre) opened in Toronto in 1989, the move has been toward stadiums with retractable roofs. Astroturf, deadly to various parts of the body but especially to knees, has been mostly replaced with FieldTurf, a softer, better-cushioned artificial grass.

When the Astros moved out, a writer (whose name I've sadly forgotten) compared it to the New York State Pavilion at Flushing Meadow-Corona Park, and called them "relics of a future that never came to pass." Various plans have been floated as to what to do with the Astrodome, but nothing has been approved. So it just sits there, waiting... for something. Anything, even demolition, but nobody can even agree on how to do that.

In 1982, another dome, the Metrodome in Minneapolis, would open, named for Hubert H. Humphrey, former Mayor and U.S. Senator from Minnesota, elected Vice President with Johnson in 1964. Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, which opened in 1937, was named for Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1972, the Harry S Truman Sports Complex opened in Kansas City, including the Royals' Kauffman Stadium and the Chiefs' Arrowhead Stadium. And, briefly, War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo was named Grover Cleveland Stadium.

If LBJ had managed to get a peace deal in Vietnam -- or if Humphrey had won the 1968 election, removing the need for LBJ to get one -- the Astrodome might well have been renamed the Lyndon B. Johnson Astrodome. But the Vietnam War would forever add a "Yes, but... " to all his achievements.