Minute Maid Park / Astros Field / Enron Field / The Ballpark at Union Station

[WinOrDieTrying12]

Whats with the huge hill in center field?
Cant they get rid of it?

[Elvis]

Whats with the huge hill in center field?
Cant they get rid of it?

No they can't. They tried last season to get rid of it again but Tal's Hill put up such a fight that they just gave up and let it be. The families of the three workers killed in the attempted hill removal have filed a class action lawsuit against the demolotion company they worked for, claiming that they should have been provided fire-resistant suits, having prior knowledge that the hill was known to spew fire and brimstone at any attempt to remove it from the stadium.

The Astros claim that they have no knowledge of how the hill gained entry into the ballpark in the first place, but have not ruled out another brave attempt at removing the mysterious and deadly hill at a later date.

[calhalo]

the hill was known to spew fire and brimstone at any attempt to remove it from the stadium.

The Babe, Huggins, and Gehrig dont like being moved from yet another in-play flagpole burial place*. That they are non-sensically buried in an Astros ballpark is one of the many secrets of legendary Minute Maid Park.




*...hey, the monuments looked like friggin tombstones.

[tmorss9]

Win, I hope you don't mind the hazing going on here... Its a tribute to Duffy's Cliff in Boston, as well as CF in Crosley field. No, they will not consider getting rid of it.

[Astros4Life]

that hill (even though i hate it) is a unique feature of the juice box just like the astros HR gas pump and the old train on the wall...so they will most likely keep it

[lefty27]

Minute Maid

Why dont they just put the wall in front of the hill? It would still be a good poke to get it out there. The bigger problem is the short porch in left field. No wonder Morgan Ensberg has 26 bombs.

PS-Is a mini-train hauling over-sized fake oranges back and forth really that spectacular?

[Astros4Life]

Why dont they just put the wall in front of the hill? It would still be a good poke to get it out there. The bigger problem is the short porch in left field. No wonder Morgan Ensberg has 26 bombs.

PS-Is a mini-train hauling over-sized fake oranges back and forth really that spectacular?

at the baseball thing at the houston art museum they have amodel of the juice box and the train was originally going to be on texas ave according to the model...so we would have had a fake train hauling over sized fake oranges outside the stadium...why didnt they do that

[burger eater]

The hill was actually improvised during the last minutes of construction so Craig Biggio would have something to trip on while helplessly chasing flyballs to deep center-field.

[sfgiants29]

Couldn't they just move in the fence? 436 is too long for baseball nowadays. If you move in the fence in right front of the hill it would probably be around a 405 foot CF wall.

[Seattle1]

Ehhhh, they should just get rid of the hill. And the flag pole. Get rid of the hill & put the wall just in front of the flag pole, that's my suggestion. (And get rid of the train too.)

[JordanDL3891]

whats wrong with it? dont you like differences?

The guy that desgined the park wanted differences and he wanted a hill in CF.

[Williamsburg2599]

Couldn't they just move in the fence? 436 is too long for baseball nowadays. If you move in the fence in right front of the hill it would probably be around a 405 foot CF wall.

For Nowadays? If anything the fences should me moved back for nowadays Having a deep center makes up for the very short left field wall.

[Elvis]

It's interesting to me how many people dislike the quirks that make different ballparks unique. I guess some people would just as soon have a mandate that all ballparks should have the same generic 330-375-400 dimensions.

Couldn't they just move in the fence? 436 is too long for baseball nowadays.

I disagree 100% with this as well. 436 should be the league minimum. There are too many bandbox parks nowadays. What is the league average ERA now, like 5? We need more pitchers parks. Pitchers parks mean more triples and inside-the-park-homeruns and I LOVE triples and inside-the-park-homers!

[Seattle1]

It's interesting to me how many people dislike the quirks that make different ballparks unique. I guess some people would just as soon have a mandate that all ballparks should have the same generic 330-375-400 dimensions.

Personally I don't dislike quirks per se, it's just that some of the quirks in Minute Maid Park seem a bit heavy-handed. I think they overdid it by having wacky quirks for the sake of having wacky quirks. (Sorry Astros fans, no offense.)

Symetrical parks like Dodger Stadium and New Comiskey are fine, but so are parks with irregular dimensions like PNC and Safeco, imho. Then there's the grand daddy of all irregular dimension parks, Fenway! But I doubt they built the Green Monster for the sake of having a quirky stadium.

[redlegsfan21]

I like the hill. That of course coming from a Reds fan who likes Crosley Field and sees his team play there 8 times.