Houston has marked one of the city’s earliest baseball landmarks, giving Colt Stadium a permanent place in the record books long after the ballpark itself was torn down and shipped to Mexico.
A Texas historical marker was unveiled Tuesday at the site where Colt Stadium once stood just north of the Astrodome, preserving the memory of the temporary park that housed Houston’s first big league team from 1962-64. The franchise played there as the Colt .45s before moving into the air-conditioned Astrodome in 1965 and becoming the Astros.
For those who were there, the old place is remembered less for comfort than for survival. The heat, the humidity and the mosquitoes were part of the experience, and longtime Astros executive Tal Smith said the stadium still deserves credit for making everything that followed possible.
“If it hadn’t been for Colt Stadium, you wouldn’t have had that,” said Tal Smith, who was a liaison for the Houston Sports Association during the construction of the Astrodome.
The marker now sits on ground that was the setting for the first Major League game in Texas history, played April 10, 1962, when the expansion Colt .45s beat the Cubs, 11-2.
Colt Stadium’s place in baseball history stretches beyond Houston’s early years. Several Hall of Famers played there, including Ron Santo, Lou Brock, Roberto Clemente, Bob Gibson, Stan Musial and Sandy Koufax. Ken Johnson also threw a no-hitter there in 1964 and still lost to the Reds, a strange piece of baseball history that historian Mike Vance helped bring back into the spotlight while working to get the marker approved.
“That’s the first time that ever happened in MLB history,” said baseball historian Mike Vance, who helped get the marker established. “Ernie Banks, who was famous for saying, ‘Let’s play two!’ got heat stroke in the first game of a doubleheader at Colt Stadium and couldn’t finish.”
Vance said the marker took about two years to make it into the ground. The effort was funded by a grant from the Society for American Baseball Research, and he described the process as a long chain of approvals through local and state historical channels before the marker was finally produced.
“You write your narrative and it goes through some editing process with the local historical commission,” he said. “The Texas Historical Commission looks at it and then they approve it and they send if off to the foundry, and you just kind of wait.
It’s great to actually see it in the ground. That’s a milestone we’re looking forward to.”
Tuesday’s ceremony drew a wide mix of people connected to Houston baseball history, including Astros officials, Harris County officials, historical societies, members of the local SABR chapter and descendants of former players. Several older fans wearing Colt .45s hats were also on hand.
Larry Dierker, who made his Major League debut at Colt Stadium on his 18th birthday in September 1964 and struck out Willie Mays, said the marker is about remembering more than one ballpark. It’s about remembering the full story.
“What it means to me in the larger sense is we shouldn’t forget our history -- our good history, our bad history, all of our history,” Dierker said. “Doing things like this connects us back to people in time to bring back memories, and with the memories come a few smiles and people telling stories.
That’s here for people to see. To me, it’s important to remember where you came from, and old Colt Stadium is where I came from.”
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