Today in History—April 9: The Day Baseball Moved Indoors

A black-and-white photo of an indoor Houston Astros baseball game at the Astrodome, showing players on the field with orange lines highlighting the base paths and outfield wall. — April 9, 1965: Mickey Mantle launched an orange baseball into the center-field stands

On this day in 1965, Mickey Mantle was given a big—if slightly strange—honor: The Yankees manager moved him to the leadoff spot so he could bat first in the world’s first professional baseball game played indoors, a bit like being first to golf on the Moon.

Mantle singled in the first inning, and in the sixth he launched a nearly 400-foot homer, sending an orange baseball into the center-field stands inside what was then the largest air-conditioned room in the world.

The Houston Astrodome—officially the Harris County Domed Stadium—opened with this exhibition game to 47,876 fans, including U.S. Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson, whose arrival was downplayed after a bomb threat was called in to a local radio station.

The crowd stayed cool and comfortable, with the stadium at 71 degrees, cushioned theater seating, and the first luxury skyboxes in pro baseball.

This was peak space-race America, and Houston was ground zero, with NASA’s Johnson Space Center miles away. The Astrodome was created to feel like part of that future.

But a few design problems became immediately apparent. The opening game used orange baseballs to try to counter the glare from the more than 4,500 Lucite panels on the 642-foot dome, but outfielders still had a hard time tracking fly balls. A rainbow of dyed balls followed—yellow, red, cerise—and players were given sunglasses in different tints. None of it helped.

Fun Fact

When the field was converted to AstroTurf, the final bit of sod was mailed to Cubs manager Leo Durocher—who really hated artificial playing surfaces.

By the end of April, 700 gallons of off-white paint were sprayed onto the dome, cutting the sunlight streaming through by up to 40 percent. It fixed the glare—and killed the specially developed Bermuda grass. So next spring the Astrodome would also give baseball its first artificial playing surface, with the debut of AstroTurf in March 1966.

Mantle scored the Yankees’ only run that opening day, and the Astros won, 2–1, making history in the stadium that would be their home until their move in 2000 to Enron Field (which became Minute Maid Park, and then Daikin Park). Now the Astrodome sits empty, caught between preservation and demolition—a reminder of a future that came and went.