About a week ago, one of my 1956 classmates from St. Thomas HS called to offer me a small box (actually, a plastic bag) of baseball “stuff” that was left over from some estate settlement he had worked out for a client. Paul Sofka (whose father built and ran Otto’s BBQ on Memorial for years) had no idea about the early Houston baseball book we are working on through SABR; he just knew about me and baseball. “Either you take these things, Bill, or they go in the garbage,” was Paul’s approach.
No way that was going to happen.
Today I picked up these items at the funeral of our classmate, Sam Sacco. It’s all from 1965 and really offers nothing new to our earlier history project, but they are still a treasure trove on many other levels.
The central piece is a really good copy of the very first game program from the Astrodome, the 2-1 Astros win over the Yankees on April 9, 1965. It was even score-kept for the entire 10-inning drama and the winning RBI by Nellie Fox. – Next up are two attachments alluding to a 1965 fan organization called the “Astronettes” – apparently, a female fan club effort back in those more repressive days of male dominance and “don’t you worry your pretty little head” messages from the good old boys to their ladies. I never heard of them, perhaps, because I was too young, masculine, and single back then to be on this kind of Astros mailing list.
Interesting to note that “Anne Elston” was the author of the club letter to the Astronettes. She may have been the wife or some other relative of Astros broadcaster Gene Elston, but I have no confirmation of that assumption as a fact without further research. – The last piece here, “The Eyeful Tower” by Doug Freelander of the Houston Post, on some unsaved date in 1965, may have been the earliest attempt to treat the quickly discovered daytime baseballs-in-the-sky visual problem with degrees of measured reality and humor. Even then, Freelander is unable to conjecture the death of grass that will occur from a painted ceiling solution that will lead to Astroturf and a change in the way sports are played that is actually the broadest effect that spun from the creation of the world’s first domed stadium.
Other items include more Astrodome game programs and extensive newspaper accounts from that first big night in the Dome. I will be using other information in future historic columns here at The Pecan Park Eagle.
If anyone remembers the “Astronettes” – please leave a comment online with this column.
Tags: 1965 Astrodome Artifacts
The Pecan Park Eagle 
January 30, 2013 at 5:07 am |
If nothing else, the programs can make a nice profit on e-Bay.