Opening Day @ Colt Stadium
Houston, Texas
April 10, 1962
Opening Day
Please check out this Baseball Almanac link to every box score summary in Houston’s 56 MLB Opening Day Games history from 1962 through 2017. The people at “BA” do a marvelous job of putting this sort of galaxy-subject data tour at our fingertips in the easiest, clearest ways.
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/opening_day/odschedule.php?t=HOU
With our coming-off-a-World-Series-win season for the first time now gaining time and weight in the can, anticipation is still only now in the early stages it will reach prior to this year’s Opening Day pot boil. And it will continue to nurse and embellish on the coals of other early memories of other Opening Days.
Who among us long-toothed fans will ever forget the first one back in 1962? With Bobby Shantz starting the first game ever as the Opening Day pitcher for a Houston-based MLB club, facing Lou Brock of the Cubs as the first oppositional hitter in our history, and two former Houston Buffs, Billy Williams and Ron Santo, starting in left field and at third base for Chicago, our then-called Colt .45s club proceeded to delay the landing of reality by using a couple of home runs from a stranger named Roman Mejias, plus batting help from others, to extend our stay in denial about what we were getting into as the baseball challenge of our lives. We beat the Cubs, 11-2, that first day, but there were a few losses ahead of us yet to come, both the dull and numbing loss-expected kinds, and the winning-expectation-yeasted heart aches that would be ours by the thousands over time before a 4-3 final out play in LA on November 1, 2017 came along in a stadium next door to Hollywood and made it all A-OK.
What were your favorite Opening Day memories?
Perhaps you will tap into the memory of a few here.
Have a great weekend too!
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Bill McCurdy
Principal Writer, Editor, Publisher
The Pecan Park Eagle
The Pecan Park Eagle 
January 6, 2018 at 4:32 pm |
Bill, one opening night in the Astrodome, aboiut 1970, the Astros were losing about 8-3 in the sixth inning. Wells Twombly got up in the press box, wringing his hands, saying, “Will this season never end?!
Our seasons are better now.
January 6, 2018 at 9:01 pm |
That had to be the1969 Opener. The visiting LA Dodgers led 8-2 thru the 8th and then won 9-3.
January 6, 2018 at 5:46 pm |
One year Maury Wills. then with Pittsburgh, got a bloop hit over short in the ninth that put me behind 4-3 or 5-4. In the bottom of the frame, Denis Menke hit a two run walk off homer. I was sitting on top of the bench in the Dome as guys used to do, and I sprung up and crowned myself. The little beany on top of the hat left a dime-sized bruise on my head. Hurt so good.