Minute Maid Park - Houston Astros

Minute Maid Park opened in 2000 to house the Major League Baseball Houston Astros.

The ballpark was Houston's first retractable-roofed stadium, protecting fans and athletes from Houston's notoriously humid weather as its predecessor, the Astrodome, did, but allowing fans to also enjoy outdoor baseball during favorable weather; something they couldn't do in the Astrodome. The ballpark also features a grass field, compared to the Astrodome's artificial AstroTurf, which was generally disliked by professional baseball players.

The largest entrance to the park is inside what was once Houston's Union Station, and the left-field side of the stadium features a train as homage to the site's history. The train moves along a track on top of the length of the exterior wall beyond left field whenever an Astros player hits a home run, or when the Astros win a game. The engine's tender, traditionally used to carry coal, is filled with giant oranges in tribute to Minute Maid's most famous product, orange juice.

The ballpark was first christened as Enron Field on April 9, 1999, with naming rights sold to the Houston energy and financial trading company in a 30 year, $100 million deal. Astros management faced a public relations nightmare when the energy corporation went bankrupt in the midst of one of the biggest corporate scandals in American history in 2001, and they bought back the remainder of Enron's thirty years of naming rights for $2.1 million, rechristening the ballpark as Astros Field on February 7, 2002.

Based on its downtown location next to the old Union Station buildings, one of the suggested names and nicknames is the Ballpark at Union Station, or the BUS. During its days as Enron Field, it was also dubbed "Ten-Run" or "Home Run" Field due to its cozy left-field dimensions. In keeping with this theme while paying homage to its current sponsor, the nickname "The Juice Box" is colloquially used today. The dubbing of the park as an extreme hitter-friendly park has been called into question in recent years. In fact, the 2009 season saw the park ranked 24th out of 30 Major League parks in terms of runs scored in the park, meaning only six other stadiums saw fewer runs scored during the season, and ten other ballparks saw more home runs hit. The extremely-deep center-field and left-center-field dimensions help to balance out the park significantly, and Minute Maid's Batting park factor is consistently very near average.

In dramatic contrast to the Astrodome, the most pitching-oriented stadium in Major League Baseball for most of its existence, Minute Maid Park is known for being particularly hitter-friendly down the lines, especially in left field where it is only 315 ft  to the Crawford Boxes, though the wall there is 19 feet tall. In a challenge to home run hitters, Drayton McLane's office windows, located in the old Union Station and directly above the Crawford Boxes, are made of glass and marked as 442 ft  from home plate.

In 2004, the Astros launched Wi-Fi throughout the ballpark, allowing fans to use the Internet while attending a game for a fee. In addition, the ballpark is the first major sports facility to have a closed captioning board for the hearing impaired.

The visiting team's bullpen is housed entirely in the exterior left field wall, next to the Crawford Boxes, making it one of the few bullpens in Major League ballparks to be completely indoors. Although windows in the outfield fence offer a view into and from the bullpen, its entrance is actually built into the side of the Crawford Boxes.

 In 2006, the Chick-fil-A cows were unveiled on the foul poles, saying EAT MOR FOWL, and the cows have Astros caps on. Anytime an Astros player hits the pole, the fans in attendance get a free chicken sandwich from Chick-fil-A. Hunter Pence is the first and second Astro to hit the left field "Fowl Pole" when he did it twice in the 2007 season. Ty Wigginton became the third Astro to hit the left field pole on September 16 2007. Kazuo Matsui hit the right field foul pole on August 3, 2009 with a 2 run homer in the 6th inning to beat the Giants.

After the 2008 season, the Astros' groundskeepers began installing 2.3 acres of a new turfgrass playing surface at Minute Maid Park. The new sod is called Platinum TE Paspalum. The Astros are the first sports organization in the world to use the product. The Astros also became one of the first to use the new Chemgrass, later known as AstroTurf after its first well-publicized use at the Houston Astrodome in 1966.