Minute Maid
Ball Park

If you are a baseball lover (and especially an Astros fan) you won’t want to miss Minute Maid Park in Houston, TX! 

Minute Maid Park, formerly known as The Ballpark at Union Station, Enron Field, and Astros Field, is a baseball stadium in downtown Houston, TX. It’s not just any baseball stadium, either. It’s a luxurious, retractable roof stadium that allows the game to take place whatever the weather! It has a seating capacity of 41,168, including 5,197 club seats and 63 luxury suites. 

The stadium opened in 2000 as the home of Major League Baseball’s Houston Astros. It has a natural grass playing field and was built as a replacement for the Astrodome, the first ever domed sports stadium. 

How did it come to be named Minute Maid Park? 

The Park was known by several names before it became Minute Maid Park: The Ballpark at Union Station, Enron Field, and Astros Field, but it officially became Minute Maid Park in 2002, when the beverage brand Minute Maid bought naming rights to the stadium for $100 million dollars to be paid over 30 years. 

The stadium was built on the site of a former train station (Union Station) and integrated the old train station building into its design as a space for a clubhouse, cafe, team store, and offices. They also included a large model train as an homage to the former Union Station. 

Construction began in 1997, and it was named “Enron Field” in 2000. However, Enron went bankrupt soon after, so the naming rights for Enron were ended prematurely, and in 2002 the field’s naming rights were sold to Minute Maid and it remains Minute Maid Park to this day. 

Today, if you visit Minute Maid Park you will get to use free wifi courtesy of the Astros, and you will get to see the Chick-fil-A cows on the foul poles, sporting the words “eat mor fowl.” If a player hits one of the foul poles, all the fans will get a coupon for a free chicken sandwich from Chick-fil-A. 

You will also get to see “El Grande” the fourth largest scoreboard in Major League Baseball, and the stadium’s cool retractable roof! 

Other things you will get to see include: 

• The old Union Station, where you can see a model train with an 800-foot track. The train’s engine is filled with oranges in homage to Minute Maid’s most famous drink. 
• Tal’s Hill, the incline and flagpole in center field. 
• On the concourse above Tal’s Hill you can see a classic petrol pump that displays the total number of Astros home runs hit since the park opened.