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LD: Yes, I did. Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis, Crosley Field,Forbes Field, Connie Mack Stadium, County Stadium — all ofthem.JP: And then watched them all get replaced by multipurposestadiums.LD: Well, the Dome was . . . we kind of led everybody down theprimrose path because they thought, boy, isn’t this great? Youcan have one stadium — football and baseball, put down Astroturfand you do not have to take care of the grass. I mean, this isthe way of the future. Everybody followed and now, they haveall said, “This is a terrible idea. It is not ideal for baseball orfootball. We need separate stadiums. The Astroturf is no good.”But all that started because of the Astrodome.The thing about baseball that is so charming is that, youknow, people collect ball parks….Thomas Boswell once said— their sounds, their sights, their smells, their neighborhoods— they are unique and people go around and want to see agame in every park, or people will go around if they are golfersand they will want to play the great golf courses because everygolf course is different. . . . And, to me, those two sports areunique for that reason, and I think really that for that reason, agreat deal of the best sports writing has been golf writing andbaseball writing.When I got here, we had a very high percentage of Cardinalsfans because the Houston Buffs were here, and all the playersthat came through Houston and went to St. Louis, among them,Dizzie Dean and others, Joe Medwick and others, so peopleliked the Cardinals. And a lot of people watched the Yankees onthe game of the week. And they were always on, and Houstondid not have a major league team, so a lot of them becameYankee fans or Cardinal fans. And then, over time, you know,it seemed like the novelty of the Astrodome wore off and wereally did not have a very good core of baseball fans in Houstonat all. And then, when I first got into broadcasting and take itin the late 1970s, early 1980s, we had a combination of a lot ofthings that were good for major league sports. We had a goodteam. We were contending each year. The Oilers and Rocketsalso did. And the oil business was booming, and we were able tosell a lot of tickets and build a bigger core of baseball, football,and basketball fans. And then, the teams, all of them sort offaded. 1986 was a great team but it was just one team in themiddle of a fairly long run of not too good teams. But the lastten or twelve years in baseball in Houston, with the combinationof the new ballpark and the contending teams year after year,has built a core of baseball fans in Houston that I think is liableto last. But in 2007, to be drawing 35,000 and 40,000 a crowd,you know, all through the midweek in September when you arealready eliminated, you know, to me, that said this is becominga pretty good baseball town. . . . I think we are getting prettyclose to getting in that group of cities where people are goingto come and support the team no matter what the team does becausethey think, well, we may be down for a few years but wewill come back, because they have the expectation that we haveThe Houston Astros take on the Cincinnati Reds at Minute Maid Park.12 Vol. 6, No. 3–Sports