An Expat’s Experience: Watching an American Major League Baseball game in Houston, Texas
MLB Baseball Game at Minute Maid Park, Houston — Houston Astros vs. Atlanta Braves
It’s baseball season again in the USA.
Houston is big sports city. Since arriving in Houston, we’ve watched 3 NFL games, 5 NBA games and 3 MLB games. This is a throw back to attending our first ever live Major League Baseball game last year.
The Astros are Houston’s MLB team.
They’ve won the World Series twice, the last time in 2022.
Baseball is the last of the 3 major American team sports that we had on our list to watch.
It was a last-minute decision to catch a Houston Astros game in downtown Houston. A friend had two spare tickets, so we figured, why not?
Getting Tickets
I was surprised by how cheap the “cheap seats” were.
Tickets started at USD $18 during the baseball season. This is very affordable if you don’t mind sitting high up in the stadium stands. You still get a pretty great view of the whole stadium and the game.
The ticket also included a free hot dog, a soft drink, and a bag of popcorn.
Classic stadium food. Not the healthiest, but dinner done!
If you attend the game on Tuesdays, we found out that you can buy $1 hot dogs!
Getting to the Stadium
Minute Maid Park is the home of the Houston Astros.
The stadium is located in downtown Houston, easy to get to by hopping onto the highway into downtown. We pre-booked our parking spot at one of the downtown parking garages 10 minutes walk from the stadium for $20 per entry using SpotHero. It’s a convenient app to use to find and pre-book parking spots ahead of time.
We get the peace of mind and avoid the stress of hunting for a parking spot when we’re rushed for time.
Downtown Houston is a bit of a ghost town after office hours. So the great thing about heading into downtown at night is that there is a ton of office buildings that offer parking at reasonable prices.
It’s cheaper than taking an Uber there and back from the stadium, and you don’t have to deal with the crowds trying to get a rideshare or any of the surge pricing after the game.
The game started at 7.10pm, and we made it just in time for the first innings.
This stadium had a pretty generous bag policy, no clear bag required! And you could bring in a small-ish camera (lenses no more than 8 inches in length) into the stadium with you.
Inside the Stadium
When I walked into the stadium, I immediately noticed the classic arches that are often found in old train stations.
It turns out the stadium actually used to be the Union Station in Houston, a train station back in the early 1900s. When they designed the stadium ballpark over Union Station back in the 1990s, they wanted to keep and integrate some of the original structure of the the station.
I think that was a great decision. It adds a lot of character to the stadium.
Food and Beverage
You’ll find the usual food options at Minute Maid Park that you’ll find at any American stadium: hot dogs, sandwiches, nachos, chicken tenders, loaded potato etc.
Similarly with beverages, you’ll find all your usual soft drink and alcoholic drink options (beer, wine, cocktails).
As I mentioned above, we each got a hot dog, a large soft drink and popcorn as part of our ticket to the game. Not a bad deal for $20!
The hot dog was actually pretty decent for stadium food. Our popcorn was unfortunately a little bit stale. It wasn’t warm and crunchy as we would like it to be. Presumably it’s been sitting on the bench for a while.
The Game
It was my first time at a baseball game and I knew very little about the rules of the game.
With some googling, I learned a few of the rules and kept up with the basics of the game.
Compared to American football and basketball, baseball moves at a much slower pace. The vibe of the stadium and game is also a lot calmer.
There isn’t much “song and dance,” so to speak, when the teams call for timeouts or when they have a break in the game.
Watching a football or basketball game, on the other hand, is packed full of entertainment for the whole night — dance performances, t-shirt throws, cheerleaders, team mascots doing silly things etc.
In baseball, the game feels fairly quiet and calm most of the time, and there would be bursts of energy when the batter hits the ball and the players are madly running to bases or trying to get the ball back to the infield to tag a player out.
Since the ballpark was built around a train station, they added a fun little train to the ballpark!
The train is ran by conductor Bobby Vasquez (“Bobby Dynamite). He appears on screen a lot throughout the game. Each time he does, he’s madly waving his arms, encouraging the crowd to make some noise.
Bobby actually moves the train from one end of the train track to the other when the Astros hit a home run!
The Astros were really struggling in this game against the Atlanta Braves. To be honest, we were not expecting to see the train move given how poorly the Astros were doing (zero runs for the first 8 innings).
But! We’re glad we stayed until the end, because the Astros scored a home run in the 9th inning and we got to see the train choo choo and move!
Final Thoughts
We spent around 3 hours at the baseball game.
All in all, it was an enjoyable night out. I learned a lot about baseball, became familiar with a few of the players' names, and saw an Astros home run.
Baseball is one of the top 3 American sports where players are paid big bucks and are big celebrities.
The atmosphere of a live baseball game was great. As an expat, it was a worth while experience to check out a MLB game while living in Houston.
Photographer’s Notes
I took these photos with my Fujifilm X-T4 camera and the Fujinon 18–55mm f2.8–4 lens. It’s a super versatile lens that I enjoy using for general photography or when I’m travelling.
The raw photos were edited in Adobe Lightroom Classic, using the profile of Astia/soft as the starting point.
👋 I’m an Aussie expat currently exploring the USA (and beyond).
✏️ Writing about travel, photography and optimising travel & points to help expats travel more and take every travel dollar further, while capturing some great photo memories to take home.
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