Quarantining With(out) the Houston Astros, Part 2Astrodome Addition/Edition Phillip Luke Sinitiere (bio) For the recent "Baseball is …" special edition of NINE, I wrote of the complex love and longing I experienced for my hometown Houston Astros during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. I used a July 1978 photograph of me at fifteen months old in the Astrodome as a historical artifact to search for my Astros affection that had largely disappeared in the wake of the team's historic cheating scandal. In the mist of several baseball memories spanning from childhood to adulthood I found love again.1 After finishing the article, I returned to the Astrodome photo. I peered further into the image and realized I had more to say about what "Baseball is" to me during the pandemic, most specifically about the Astrodome. Below, I entangle some of the Dome's history with more of my Astros memories. So, even though this essay appears after NINE's special edition, think of this article as a second installment, an Astrodome addition to my previous reflections. Although my 1978 Astrodome photo remains the primary lens through which I located more of my "Baseball is" musings below, I discovered the Astrodome edition of this essay along a pathway of memories that led through Minute Maid Park, the Astros' current home. Let me explain. I dedicated my previous NINE article to the memory of Stan F. Curtis (1929–2020), one of the biggest baseball fans I had the pleasure of knowing. Stan passed away just as I started writing my first Astros essay. I've thought a lot about him recently and in so doing realized that my memories of him compelled me to compose something more about quarantining with(out) the Astros. Additional recollections surfaced as I reread Stan's 2010 book Covering All the Bases: One Fan's Quest to See a Game in Every Major League Ballpark throughout the late spring and summer of 2020. I met Stan sometime in the mid-1990s through the Houston Golf Association (HGA). He worked for the Shell Oil Company, which was the title sponsor [End Page 45] of the PGA Tour's Shell Houston Open at the time. Stan was member of the HGA and worked as a corporate volunteer in its junior golf division by helping to run youth golf tournaments during the summer months. I competed on the HGA's junior golf circuit throughout my high school years, and it was in this context that I got to know him. During my college years, I worked as a junior golf coordinator during the summer months; I helped to plan, organize, and direct tournaments on the same circuit where I once competed. Stan still served as a volunteer, so our conversations continued. They expanded to sports beyond golf and we chatted frequently about baseball. While the specific details of those conversations disappeared with time, Stan's smile, kindness, and thoughtfulness stand out to me now. Yet I found one specific memory of his generosity: in the summer of 2000, Stan invited me to an Astros game at the club's brand-new ballpark, Enron Field, where he had season tickets. I have struggled to remember who the Astros played during my inaugural visit to what is now Minute Maid Park (renamed after the infamous 2001 Enron corporate scandal that rocked Houston and the nation), although I'm certain it was a night game.2 However, other events in my life that summer—I got married in August—provided me reasonable confidence to suspect that Stan and I attended a game sometime in July, probably late July. Based on the Astros schedule that year, it is most likely I saw them play either the Cincinnati Reds or St. Louis Cardinals. During a five-game home stretch in late July, the Astros faced the Reds twice and had a three-game series with St. Louis. They split the series with Cincinnati, but beat the Cardinals twice, scoring ten runs and fifteen runs, respectively.3 If it was the Cardinals, several names on the roster that year would have caught my eye: Mark McGwire, Eric Davis, Shawon Dunston...
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Sep 30, 2024
Tyler Johnson 
Open Access