Something I'll always remember watching the Pirates getting clobbered by the Astros on KDKA-TV--The Astros knocked four Pirates pitchers out of the box in about two innings. The first guy went out with the usual "Pitcher to the Showers" display; he pulled the shower chain and the stall filled with water. The second went out and the video board showed two sets of eyes underwater, with the caption "Two's Company". When the third guy went out, three sets of eyes appeared and the caption was "Three's a Crowd". Finally, the fourth pitcher went out, four sets of eyes appeared, and the caption was "Anyone for Bridge??"
I never got to visit the Astrodome until 1989 for an Astros game. Unfortunately by that time the scoreboard had been torn down to add more seats for the still-bad Oilers not to sell to their games on insistence from their owner, Bud Adams, and he ended up moving the team anyway a few years later. :(
America was leagues ahead of their times when it came to stuff like scoreboard numerical and video display screens, and it's very impressive for 1965. All of our smartphones, projectors, LED clocks and computers were widely influenced by this technology.
SURELY, There are people in this great state ours Texas especially this city we live in Houston that want to save the Dome,it's truly a landmark and the first of it's kind in the United States not to say the man behind this was so much ahead of his times with his vision! I PERSONALLY have great memories as a child growing up in the Dome and watching my father pitch baseball games !!!
You can thank former Dodger Walter O'Malley for the Astrodome! The dome was originally supposed to be in Brooklyn, the city wouldn't give him the funding, so he moved the Dodgers to Los Angeles, and the Astros took the plans and built the Astrodome!
+JENDALL714 What did they need an air conditioned domed stadium for in New York? It's not a tropical climate like here in southeast Texas. All they had to do was build O'Malley something like Shea was in Queens.
Sometime in the 1970s, before the first rebuild on Yankee Stadium, the idea was floated to put a dome on Shea Stadium and AstroTurf it so that it could serve as a home for the Yankees, Mets, Football Giants, and Jets. William Shea, the namesake of the stadium, didn't like the idea (he felt that baseball was best in an open-air park), and the preliminary engineering study showed that the stadium foundations wouldn't support the weight of a dome (they weren't meant to do so in the first place). So, Yankee Stadium got its middle-age overhaul, and the first Meadowlands stadium was built for the Jets and Giants.
@@robertwayne808 There was a battle between O'Malley and Robert Moses over where the new Dodgers' stadium would be built. O'Malley wanted to build it somewhere near Flatbush Avenue, but Moses supposedly wanted it out in Flushing Meadow, where Shea was built. Now, who would want to root for the "Queens Dodgers", anyway? :D
Yes. There is a scene in the 1977 comedy. "The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training" where the Bears are playing a five-inning preliminary game. The Houston Astros have a cameo as themselves. The huge scoreboard went off when the Bears belted a home run.
