Houston Colt .45s (1962-1964)

National League (1962-1964)

Background

The Houston Colt .45s baseball team is not, in fact, a defunct team. The club simply changed names after three seasons. However, in the years it played under its original moniker, the team had a distinct identity. Indeed, professional baseball in Houston has a long and storied history. 

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Way back when

For almost 75 years, the city was represented by the Houston Buffaloes (sometimes spelled “Buafflos”), also known as the Buffs. The team began play in 1888 as a charter member of the original Texas League (1888-1892, 1895-1899), not to be confused with the current league of the same name. 

The club was quite popular and very successful. However, particularly after World War II, Houston pushed to become a major league city and sought to land top-level football and baseball teams. In 1952, a group of wealthy Houston businessmen made an offer to purchase the St. Louis Cardinals and move them to Texas.³Saigh Mum on Transfer Proposal, UPI via the News-Press, St. Joseph, MO, October 24, 1952. However, a local buyer for the Cards was found in St. Louis, and the team stayed in Missouri.

Big league hopes

Throughout the 1950s, several other cities became interested in acquiring major league teams, especially baseball and football. Wealthy individuals and groups tried repeatedly to either buy existing teams and relocate them or convince Major League Baseball (MLB) and the National Football League (NFL) to expand. Neither circuit was keen on the idea of adding more clubs and diluting their profits.

On the football side, the American Football League (AFL) was formed in July of 1959 by a group of men, most of whom had been unable to buy an existing team in the NFL⁴New Pro Circuit Named American Football Loop, AP via The Lawrence Daily-Journal World, Aug. 1, 1959. That same week, the Continental League (CL), a proposed third major league baseball circuit, was also officially announced under similar circumstances.⁵5 Cities in 3rd Major League: 8 Teams Planned for 1961 Start, UPI via The Pittsburgh Press, July 27, 1959

Quite Continental

After New York lost two of its three Major League Baseball teams to California, an effort was started to replace at least one of them. When MLB failed to respond to calls for expansion, New York attorney William Shea came up with the idea for a third major league in November of 1958⁶Accept Third Loop Solon Says, UPI via The News-Sentinel, Rochester, IN, Nov. 14, 1958

MLB owners insisted that expansion would come, but Shea, as well as others seeking teams, were not patient. The established leagues soon got religion, though, as the CL lined up owners of means in Denver, Minneapolis–St. Paul, New York City, Toronto, and Houston. Buffalo, Dallas/Ft. Worth, and Atlanta were soon added to the mix. 

In response, the American League allowed the Washington Senators to move to Minneapolis St. Paul, then placed an expansion team in the nation’s capital to replace the relocated club. Los Angeles was given a second major league team, likely to prevent the CL from grabbing that fast-growing market. New York and Houston received expansion teams in the NL. With the mission of bringing at least one new team to the Big Apple complete, Shea pulled the plug on the CL. While the New York and Houston teams weren’t officially announced until October 17, 1960⁷Houston, New York, Voted into NL for 1962, AP via The Victoria Advocate, Oct. 18, 1960, the CL disbanded two months earlier.⁸Continental League Dies, But Majors Vote Expansion, AP via The Free Lance-Star, Fredericksburg, VA, Aug. 3, 1960 

Let the show begin

The Houston franchise was awarded to Judge Roy Hofheinz. A name-the-team contest produced the name Colt .45s. As part of the deal, the new team had to compensate the minor league Houston Buffaloes for moving into the market. The Houston Sports Authority, headed by Hofheinz to oversee the new team, bought the minor league club outright. Several staff and players from the Buffaloes, as well as the radio broadcast team, made the move to the Colt .45s. The minor league team’s park, however, did not. 

Shortly before the Colt .45s were awarded, plans were proposed to renovate and expand Buffalo Stadium in hopes the city would indeed land a Major League Baseball team. The Colt .45s, though, decided not to go through with the revamp, opting instead to build an entirely new park, the state-of-the-art Astrodome. Buffalo Stadium was deemed unsuitable even as a temporary home, which led the Colt .45s to quickly construct Colt Stadium as the club’s interim home.

The Colt .45s played their first regular season game on April 10, 1962, against the Chicago Cubs at Colt Stadium. The newcomers won 11-2. They finished with a record of 64-96, ahead of the Cubs and their expansion brethren, the New York Mets. In 1963 and 1964, they finished with a record of 66-96, good for ninth place both times.

At first, the folks at the Colt Manufacturing Co. were quite pleased to have a professional baseball team named after their famous firearm. However, they started to sour on the idea when the Houston Sports Authority declined to share merchandising revenue with the gunmaker. The abysmal play of the club didn’t help to assuage Colt’s displeasure.⁹Fans Feel Houston Astros Don’t Measure Up to Name, The Washington Post via the Calgary Herald, Calgary, AL, Mar., 25, 1965 Fortunately, the team found a way to save face and create a synergistic marketing plan.  On October 20, 1964, the club announced it would have a new name for 1965.¹⁰Colt .45s To Change Name, AP via The Telegraph-Herald, Dubuque, IA, October 21, 1964 It didn’t take long to find a new name.

About a month after the name change was announced, the team’s brand-new ballpark, the Harris County Domed Stadium, as it was then called, was completed. The stunning building was nicknamed the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” However, its futuristic looks and trappings didn’t quite line up with a team named for a firearm introduced in 1873. It fit perfectly with city’s new distinction as a center for the highly popular space program.¹¹Colt .45s Shot Down: Will Change Name, AP via The Gazette, St. Joseph, MO., Oct. 21, 1964

Guns down

On December 1, 1964, Club President Roy Hoffheinz announced the team was changing its name to the Astros.¹²Houston Colts Become Astros, AP via The Florence Times, Florence, AL., Dec. 2, 1964 “We think it is in keeping with the situation in which we find ourselves as the space capital of the world,” he told the press, cleverly spinning the name change into the team’s favor. “The name was taken from the stars and indicates we are on the ascendency.”

At first, the new name was a source of embarrassment for some fans, who preferred the original name.¹³Lunar Ticks Urged for Houston Baseball Name, Sports Lines, The Victoria Advocate, Mar., 17, 1965 A team playing in a space age facility needed a modern name, though, so Astros it was.

Oddly, the name Astrodome didn’t turn up in the press until a month later. In January 1965, the Associated Press reported the building would be called the Astrodome, at the behest of Hoffheinz, with the official name remaining the Harris County Domed Stadium. This upset several county commissioners, who pointed out that since the taxpayers and county paid for the stadium, it should only be called the Harris County Domed Stadium.

The Astros opened their new home on April 9, 1965 with an exhibition game against the New York Yankees. A sell-out crowd of 47,879 watched the hometown team down the Bronx Bombers 2-1. President Lyndon B. Johnson was in the stands with his wife Lady Bird, as was Governor John Connally, who threw out the first pitch, and Houston Mayor Louie Welch. 

Dick “Turk” Farrell of the Astros threw the game’s first pitch. Mickey Mantle recorded the first hit (a single) and the first home run in the Astrodome. Meanwhile, old Colt Stadium sat in the parking lot next to the shiny new indoor ballpark for years until it was dismantled and sold to a minor league club in Torreon, Mexico, in the early 1970s. 

What’s in a name?

While the team, press, and fans called the facility the Astrodome, several local politicians were still upset that the official name, the Harris County Domed Stadium, wasn’t being used exclusively. In press reports from 1965, both names were often used together, as in “the Harris County Domed Stadium, called the Astrodome by its tenants,” from a December 5, 1965 article from UPI. By June 1966, though, the facility was referred to only as The Houston Astrodome in newspaper accounts. It’s unclear when the name was officially changed by the county.

In any case, switching to Astros from Colt .45s, as well as the somewhat clandestine effort to change their stadium’s official name to Astrodome, reflected a move away from the image of Houston as a Wild West town replete with gunplay to a modern, Space Age city. It’s a theme the franchise promotes to this day.