Events Other Than Baseball
While primarily a baseball venue, Minute Maid Park can adequately host sports such as American football, soccer, and both codes of rugby. The venue can also play host to large-scale rock concerts.
Its debut as a soccer venue happened during the 2006 edition of the CONCACAF Champions Cup. The stadium hosted the first leg of the quarterfinal between Portmore United of Jamaica (the "home" team) and Club América of Mexico. Portmore United effectively sold the rights to their home leg (Portmore's usual home stadium is the 2,000 seat Ferdi Neita Sports Complex in Portmore, Jamaica) to an American sports marketing company who placed the tie in Houston hoping to attract Mexican-Americans to the match. 12,988 (a "home" record for Portmore) saw America run out 2-1 winners with goals from Christian Gimenez, and Aaron Padilla after Remeel Wolfe had given the CFU side a shock lead.
The stadium also is the host of the Houston College Classic college baseball, part of the winter fan festival held in February. The tournament features local schools the University of Houston and Rice University every year, a pair of Big 12 schools, alternating between the University of Texas at Austin and Texas Tech University, and Texas A&M University and Baylor University, as well as two other teams from around the country.
Madonna performed a concert as part of her Sticky & Sweet Tour on November 16, 2008, marking her first Texas appearance in 18 years. The attendance for the concert was 41,498.
The nationally syndicated TV talk show Rachael Ray held a mass wedding at the park following Hurricane Ike for 40 couples who were unable to get married after a company they paid to hold the weddings went bankrupt. Comedian Jeffrey Ross served as best man for all 40 couples. The ceremony was aired as part of a special episode of the talk show on November 21, 2008.
On November 5, 2011 Taylor Swift held her Houston gig of the Speak Now World Tour at Minute Maid Park. There was a record breaking number of attendance of 42,905.
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Famous quotes containing the words events and/or baseball:
“One thing that makes art different from life is that in art things have a shape ... it allows us to fix our emotions on events at the moment they occur, it permits a union of heart and mind and tongue and tear.”
—Marilyn French (b. 1929)
“Baseball is the religion that worships the obvious and gives thanks that things are exactly as they seem. Instead of celebrating mysteries, baseball rejoices in the absence of mysteries and trusts that, if we watch what is laid before our eyes, down to the last detail, we will cultivate the gift of seeing things as they really are.”
—Thomas Boswell, U.S. sports journalist. “The Church of Baseball,” Baseball: An Illustrated History, ed. Geoffrey C. Ward, Knopf (1994)