Mike Acosta (L) of the Houston Astros and Stan “The Man” Curtis of SABR get ready for the former’s presentation on the new team uniforms for 2013.
The Larry Dierker Chapter of Houston of SABR (The Society for American Baseball Research) in Houston played a doubleheader on January 26, 2013, adding the neat dimension of playing out their first priority shorter game of conducting a National SABR Saturday meeting inside the longer all day confines of participating across the street at Minute Maid Park in educating the public all day on the merits of SABR and the value of their personal membership.
All SABR eyes were still focused on the “new” old look of Houston Astros gear for 2013, although we’ve pretty much seen it all since shortly after the end of the 2012 season.
The SABR meeting was held at the Home Plate Grill on Texas Avenue from 12 NOON to 2:00 PM. The SABR educational/recruitment program was conducted at the ballpark of the Houston Astros, also on Texas Avenue, from 10:00 AM until about 5:00 PM as part of the ball club’s annual Winter FanFest. A good time was had by all in both places as we rotated people in out of the greeting program as well as we could and into the meeting across the avenue.
Matt Rejmaniak informed us that the videotape we made of Monte Irvin speaking in 2010 is now on file at the Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown. That’s a real feather in our Houston cap as a contribution to oral history. Matt also brought a seat from old Tiger Stadium in Detroit that he owns to show everyone who attended SABR Saturday 2013 in Houston.
As one might expect from us in Houston this winter, the major buzz around here is about the Astros’ big move in 2013 to the American League West, the bad blood fomenting in some local National League traditionalists over our city’s surrender to the wide world of DH baseball, the impressive “pluck” in the words and attitude of new Astros manager Bo Porter, and the “plucked-clean” salary figures that now remain on Houston’s youngest, least experienced, and most poorly paid team in the big leagues.
It’s going to be interesting all year. The over/under pools on 100-plus losses this season for the third year in a row should be hot and heavy on the high side, but I don’t know. Something about Bo Porter tells me the Astros are going to be a better club, even if they do lose most of their games this year, playing in the land of the heavy bats. We’ll soon enough see.
01/26/13: We probably had a rotating group of 20 people in the SABR meeting room at all times.
The 2013 Houston grey road uniform (L) and the Friday night home orange jersey.
Houston Astros Authentication Specialist Mike Acosta was our featured speaker on SABR Saturday. Mike came with four of the new uniform models and a lot of information on how he and the club worked to get the club back to its early roots in orange and dark blue. With some adjustments, the uniforms, the lettering, and the decorative torso piping go way back to the early 1960’s – and perhaps, even further, if you care to compare the new “Houston” lettered grey jersey in the second (above) uniform color photo shown here with the black and white “Houston” grey road uniform of shortstop Billy Costa in the old 1952 Houston Buffs minor league photo that follows. I happened to have had this photo with me yesterday in a scrapbook of several we are considering for our major book project, but one of our members found it and spotted the similarity to its 2013 counterpart only after Mike Acosta had departed.
Billy Costa, SS
1952 Houston Buffs
It proves one of three things: (1) that chance similarity is wildly inexplicable; (2) that history has a subliminally powerful effect upon the future; or (3) that everything new is really simply a link in the chain of redundant replication of all that came earlier – or words to that effect.
We of SABR want to thank members Matt Rejmaniak and Stan Curtis for putting together yesterday’s meeting plan and we ask all SABR members to stay tuned to some further e-mail word from our Chairman, Bob Dorrill. We’ve been bumped from our normal second Monday date at the Inn of the Ballpark because of the NBA’s All Star grab on just about all downtown hotel space for the month of February and we may have to wait until March to meet again.
Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, the other FanFest news was: (1) the altered way the ballpark now looks with the old Ben Milam Hotel in front now down; (2) the bargain on game-worn uniforms for sale at FanFest. (Wilton Lopez, #50, and others, were going for $20-$50, depending on whether it was the BP or game version; (3) the orange changes that are beginning to work into the color scheme at MMP; and (4) unfortunately, the continuing presence of those butt-ugly special sponsorship signs that continue to decorate/obliterate the architectural lines and beauty of our ballpark.
Current View of Union Station, with the old Ben Milam Hotel now down and out.
Minute Maid Park, 01/26/13: The view to center and right still bears that beckoning green call to baseball.
Minute Maid Park, 01/26/13: … Hope you like it, baseball fans.
On another level, the ugly sponsorship signs in left field that remain from last year’s nightmare, simply serve as ongoing proof of another old law in applied physics:
“If you want to raise ugliness to a new altitude of visual disservice to the community, all you need is one large and powerful crane.”
The Pecan Park Eagle 
January 27, 2013 at 3:16 pm |
Sad about the old Ben Milam Hotel. Occasionally my Dad would want a change of venue from St. Anne’s Sunday Mass and we would go down to the Annunciation Cathedral for Mass and the breakfast at the Ben Milam Hotel. The trains were still running in those days-carrying passengers instead of piggy back trailers.
January 28, 2013 at 12:32 am |
Dizzy Dean lived at the Ben Milam in 1931. If anyone in SABR is interested in Diz, there is an old magazine called the Gargoyle which they have down at the Houston Public Library, and one issue of it has a great interview with Dizzy in it which was conducted in his room at the Ben Milam. The Gargoyle wasn’t a sports magazine; it was more like Houston’s answer to the New Yorker. Sorry I don’t remember the issue; I read it at the library years ago. It shouldn’t be hard to find, though.
January 28, 2013 at 3:06 am |
We had a good time at the NYC SABR meeting, too. President Gennaro gave a good presentation and Marty Appel was entertaining as always.
January 28, 2013 at 1:47 pm |
Due to the business I am in, I had many opportunities to get inside the ben milam hotel within the last few years. It was the first hotel with air conditioning in Houston. Unfortunately, by the time I was able to enter the hotel, deterioration had set in and vagrants made their presence known. The site is going to become a multi-family hi-rise with retail and restaurant(s) on floor 1.