Dome Sweet Dome

I saw more games in the Dome than in any other stadium and I had a love/hate relationship with the place. When it was full and the crowd was into the game it was really a rocking atmosphere. But no place I've been to could be as dead as the Dome during a meaningless, sparsely attended game.

A week ago I attended my first meeting of the Houston Chapter of SABR. I've been a member for a few years but never bothered to go to the monthly gatherings. The chapter is named for Larry Dierker and lo and behold he attended this meeting as a guest and I was seated right there with him. He was very cordial. He signed some items that people brought (I hadn't considered doing that for some reason) and participated in the discussions.

One of the items that was passed around at the meeting was the book shown at the top. I had a copy stored away and when I saw the one last week I was reminded of how cool it is. Nearly three hundred pages long it chronicles the short history of the Houston Colts/Astros, the building of the Dome and much, much more.

There is an Astros 'yearbook' incorporated into the thing as well as sections covering the MLB teams, all the NFL teams including a whole Oilers section. This despite the fact that the Oilers were still years away from moving into the Dome. Also in the book are pages covering a wide range of tenants the Dome was hosting including the Billy Graham Crusade, University of Houston football and the Houston rodeo.

It's really a remarkable volume and I wish I could do it justice with scans of more of it but I hate taking a chance of breaking the spine. I'll settle for pics of just a few pages.

I love this feature on the various colors of the seating levels.

I should have fixed this photo but with this and the next photo you get an idea of what the Astros' section looked like.

American League teams got one page each. The NL teams got a two page spread. There is a large baseball records section in there, too.

George Blanda and the Oilers! One of the speakers at the meeting reprised a locally famous quote from Oilers' owner Bud Adams: "The Astrodome may be the 8th Wonder of the World but the ninth wonder is the rent!". It took Roy Hofheinz and Bud Adams until 1968 to agree on a deal to get pro football into the Dome.

Meanwhile the U of H was playing football there. The Cougars get a nice section in the book, nearly a dozen pages. Our big star, Warren McVea is featured.

In the photo below you can see the late Phil Hoffman in the upper right. He was UH President in my first go round as a Coog. I have a funny story that involves him, me and some drunk friends of mine, an open dorm window and a water hose hooked up to a shower. I'll need to check to see if the statue of limitations is up before I get into it though.

And finally here's a page with a nice full color picture of some of the Astros' staff. I'm glad they got rid of those 'H' caps once the season started.

This post just doesn't do the book justice in any way. What a deal it was for just a dollar in 1965. I didn't pay much more than that many years later. You can find them for $10 or less pretty easily. Waaaaaay more entertaining than a Topps Now card at the same price.

Card Show Sig..... Ernest Givins

At the TriStar show this past weekend the usual array of high priced autograph guests were brought in. I'll spare you my rant about the nearly $200 price tag on a Roger Clemens signature but needless to say I didn't pony up for any of them, not even the $35 to be photographed with some skanky fake wrestling bimbo diva.

I did however take advantage of the fact that former Houston Oiler wideout Ernest Givins had a table out among the dealers and was selling photos and such that he was signing. A quick phone app check of my fantasy football database (Dropbox is awesome) showed me that I had Givens on my team three different times. So I walked over, selected a picture and asked him if he'd inscribe it with that info.

He laughed about it and asked me why I had drafted him so often. Then after he'd signed the photo he said "You missed my best seasons!". As I expected he turned out to be a very nice guy. The small fee for his photo and sig made for a much more memorable moment than the time a Hall of Famer whose name I won't mention signed my baseball at a show and then rolled it back across the table to me without looking up.

Monday Morning Quarterback #28 Warren Moon 1992 Topps

In this ongoing series of posts I am going to feature cards from my fantasy football player collection, specifically the 117 quarterbacks I've had on my team's roster since 1980. I have one selected card for each player in my All-Time Flyers binder. Through the years I've tried to use as many different card varieties as possible while holding on to my preference which is: a card issued in a year I owned the player showing him in the proper team uni in a vertical format. Card availability and my whims have had a big impact on that standard as we will see. 

NFL Info: Following his college career at the University of Washington (which included a Rose Bowl MVP performance in his senior season) Warren Moon was not drafted by an NFL team. He instead played in Canada for the CFL's Edmonton Eskimos where he helped the club win five consecutive Gray Cups. He signed with the Houston Oilers in 1984 and spent eleven years as the starter there and was a 3 time All Pro selection. After his up and down decade plus in Houston (he twice led the league in yards and once in TDs) he moved on to play five more seasons as an NFL regular in Minnesota and Seattle. He finished his career as a back-up for the Chiefs. At one point he held career marks in passing yards, attempts, completions and TDs. His long career culminated with his election to the Pro football Hall of Fame. He now works as a broadcaster for the Seahawks.

Fantasy Impact: Moon made five starts for my Flyers in 1984 and another in 1985. His record for me pretty much mirrors the mediocre state of my franchise then. I have him listed as having been on my club in 1998 while he was with Seattle but he doesn't appear on my season roster/scoring spreadsheet. That'll sometimes happen when I draft a guy and cut him before the season gets rolling.

The Card: I like this card more than it probably deserves to be liked. The inner frame does a good job of focusing the action and the whole thing is team color coordinated. Topps packed a lot of info and stats on the back and even found space to include a shot of Moon's home stadium, the Astrodome.

Random 80's Crap from my Hobby Closet, Pt.4 (Why do I save this stuff edition)

Recently I pulled a random box out of my 'hobby closet' and opened it just for the hell of it. I have about a dozen of these boxes, most are the document storage-type things and I haven't looked at them in years. Inside the one I chose I found all sorts of junk I had picked up in the 80's. There is no logic to any of it. I bought whatever struck my fancy back in those days and I saved everything. 
I found small boxed sets that I had pulled the Orioles out of, commercially produced and team issued postcards, odd ball TCMA trash, unlicensed photo cards, pocket schedules, ticket stubs and much more. While I'm off visiting the Big Apple I thought I'd put up a few posts showing the 'stuff' I once valued so highly. 

I used to keep everything. No matter how useless it might be. Like ticket stubs, business cards of people who I knew I'd never need to deal with again, Reggie Bar wrappers, etc. Here's proof from my box of 80s junk:

First up a Ted Williams photo card that had a subscription ad for Baseball Card News on the back, dated 1983. I have six of them. Lord knows why. But I did like Baseball Card News. I liked all the publications, Tuff Stuff, The Trader Speaks, SCD. I got them all at one time or another.

This is a Mother's Cookies Nolan Ryan. I guess any Nolan item is worth saving. I bet a Ryan fan would like this. I always took my kids to Mother's Cookies giveaway days at the Astrodome. They liked the cards a lot. The distribution was intended to encourage kids to swap dupes to obtain a full set but I never knew anyone who did that.

I was puzzled when I looked up the date August 14th on the Yankee's 1980 schedule and it showed them to be in Baltimore that night. I had gone to Yankee Stadium on that annual summer trip and the Yankee logo caused me to assume it was from the game we saw against the White Sox. Then I realized that this was from a game in Baltimore against the Yanks that same week. The section number should have tipped me wise when I saw it. 

I had a brief fling as an Expos fan in the first few years of their existence. My family took a vacation in Montreal and Quebec City in the summer of 1969 and on August 13th we were at Parc Jarry when the played, and lost to, the Reds. It was a wild experience. The fans were really rabid and it was 'Bat Night'. You've never lived until you have listened to the sound of thousands of bats pounding on aluminum seats all at the same time. 

Another memorable thing about that night was following Jim Palmer's no-hitter via the scoreboard. The Expos game ran 11 innings and was over late and Palmer had wrapped things up by the time we left. The scoreboard in Montreal was updating the Orioles-A's game every inning. It was a very great night!

All of which is a roundabout way of explaining this Mack Jones postcard. I bought it and several others including Rusty Staub, at the concession stand that night. For a few years the Expos eclipsed the Dodgers as my NL team of interest.

How cool is Mack Jones?

College sports schedules are another thing I have tons of. I guess I ought to just keep one of each. This Phi Slama Jama one is pretty cool. That's Akeem (he was 'Akeem' before he was 'Hakeem') Olajuwon. That was a terrific team to watch. 

Why I have a small stash of 1984 Rice Owl football schedules is a mystery to me. 

This ticket stub comes from the Colts visit to the Dome in 1984. The Colts won, 35-21. Since the wounds of the Colts' departure from Baltimore were still fresh I was cheering for the Oilers despite having so many of my favorite players, Curtis Dickey, Ray Butler, etc. in Indy. Earl Campbell, one of the most fun players to watch ever, scored twice. Section 502 was behind the west end-zone upstairs. I also sat there for University of Houston games for many, many years.

And finally here is a USFL schedule for the Houston Gamblers. By all accounts they were a fun team to watch with the early version of the Run-N-Shoot triggered by Jim Kelly. I never saw them play. Not even on TV. I had no interest in any pro football league other than the NFL. I did meet Jim Kelly once though. One afternoon he walked in to a memorabilia store I frequented. the folks who ran the place were huge USFL/Gambler fans. He poked around, posed for a pic or two, signed a few things for them and left. I might have said 'Hi' or shook his hand. I don't remember.

1964 Philadelphia Gum John Mackey

One of my favorite football cards is this John Mackey from the '64 Philly set. I like the card, sure, but I like it mostly because of John Mackey. He changed the position of tight end from one of a blocking end to a pass catching weapon.

He had speed and size and great hands. I was fortunate to have seen him play in person. My father and I drove through a pouring rainstorm to see the Colts play the Oilers in the Astrodome in October of 1970. It was the only Baltimore Colt game I ever attended. Mackey caught two Johnny Unitas passes for 21 yards. He was no longer a focal point of the team's offense but he still had skills.

Two things stand out about that game. First is that had it not been a Colt game we might not have gone. The rain was horrendous as it often can be in Houston, and we had to get up from watching the Orioles and Reds playing Game Two of the World Series. But it was the Colts and my Dad knew how much I wanted to actually see Unitas play so off we went, listening to the Orioles as we drove.

The second thing is how the Colts won. On their last drive of the game Unitas threw a scoring strike to Roy Jefferson for the winning TD. As long as I live I'll never forget seeing my all time favorite athlete throw the pass and begin to trot towards the sidelines even before it was caught, not even watching. Even nearing the end of his career Unitas was a joy to watch.

A few months later Mackey took a tipped pass off the hands of Eddie Hinton and the Cowboy's Mel Renfro and scored a 50 yards TD in Super Bowl III. Those were heady days for me!

John Mackey is a Hall of Famer but politics held him out of the Hall for far too long. His work as the NFLPA's first president was held against him. It angered me at the time. He has since been named to many all-time great lists including being ranked as #48 on the NFL Network's Top 100 NFL players of all time.

John Mackey, an engaging, witty and intelligent man in his prime was defeated by dementia in his later years. He died of the effects in July of last year.