BATTER UP!

Enormous new baseball entertainment complex blasts a home run in Houston

Enormous new baseball entertainment complex blasts a home run in Houston
Home Run Dugout opens this week. Photo courtesy of Home Run Dugout.

The TopGolf of baseball will make its Houston-area debut this week. Home Run Dugout will open its new location in Katy (1220 Grand W. Blvd.) this Thursday, March 30.

Timing the grand opening to the start of the Major League Baseball season is no coincidence. Home Run Dugout aims to do for baseball what TopGolf did for golf and driving ranges or Flight Club did for darts by rethinking a traditional batting cage experience and adding an extensive menu of food and drinks.

Where Home Run Dugout sets itself apart from a regular batting cage is its ground-up, soft toss pitching machine that eliminates the need for batting helmets. It also makes hitting homers easier by limiting the ball’s horizontal movement.

“Now, for the first time, you don’t have to put on a helmet. You don’t have to get in an enclosure. You don’t have to worry about getting hit with the ball,” co-founder Nick Hermandorfer told CultureMap Austin in 2019. “You wave your bat over home plate and the ball pops up. You can also program different strike zones and different stadiums.”

Photo courtesy of Home Run Dugout.

The venue features 12 Batting Bays that can accommodate a group of up to 12 people. Available by reservation, each bay features a 20x15-foot screen that projects different baseball stadiums — including Houston’s Minute Maid Park — and five TVs for watching sports. Players may choose from 10 different sizes and styles of bats.

In addition to the Batting Bays, Home Run Dugout offers an outdoor mini field that’s designed for either wiffle ball or kick ball, complete with stadium lights, an outfield net, and a vintage scoreboard. Available on a first-come, first-served basis, the field will eventually host leagues, tournaments, contests, and concerts.

Surrounding the field is a patio and biergarten that seats almost 500 people. Designed to look like the concourse at a baseball stadium, the outdoor seating area features fire pits, Adirondack chairs, and a main dining area with a bar. An indoor, private events space — complete with two Batting Bays and a dedicated bar — offers room for 65 people.

Food options start with four kinds of hot dogs: Chicago, New York, chili dog, and a classic ballpark. Diners may also opt for crispy chicken sliders, smoked chicken wings, salads, flatbreads, burgers, or other sandwiches.

Continue on CultureMap to learn more!

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Houston must improve in close games down the stretch and into October. Composite Getty Image.

While holding one’s breath that for a change the Astros aren’t publicly grossly underestimating an injury’s severity with Jose Altuve having missed the last game and a half with “right side discomfort…”

The Astros averting a sweep vs. Oakland Thursday was in no way a must-win, but getting the win allowed a mini sigh of relief. The Astros are NOT in the process of choking. Could they collapse? Sure that’s possible. Also possible is that they’ve just been in one more ebb phase in a season of ebb and flow. They certainly have left the door ajar for the Seattle Mariners to swipe the American League West, but with the M's simply not looking good enough to walk through that door the Astros remain in commanding position. The Astros made a spectacular charge from 10 games behind to grab the division lead. But there was a lot of runway left when the Astros awoke June 19th 10 games in arrears. September 3 the Astros arose with a comfy six game lead over the M’s. With Seattle blowing a 4-1 eighth inning lead in a 5-4 loss to the Texas Rangers Thursday night, heading into Friday night the Astros' advantage is back up to four and a half games despite the Astros having lost six of their last nine games and having gone just 10-12 over their last 22 games. Not a good stretch but nothing freefalling about it.

While the Mariners have the remainder of their four-game series vs. the dead in the water Rangers this weekend, the Astros play three at the lousy Los Angeles Angels. The Astros should take advantage of the Halos, with whom they also have a four-game series at Minute Maid Park next weekend. Since the All-Star break, only the White Sox have a worse record than the Angels 19-31 mark (the White Sox are 6-43 post-break!). Two of the three starting pitchers the Angels will throw this weekend will be making their third big league starts. To begin next week the Astros are in San Diego for a three-game-set against a Padres club which is flat better than the Astros right now. That does not mean the Astros can’t take that series. The Mariners meanwhile will be still at home, for three vs. the Yankees.

There are some brutal Astros’ statistics that largely explain why this is merely a pretty good team and not more. As I have noted before, it is a fallacy that the best teams are usually superior in close games. But the Astros have been pathetic in close games. There used to be a joke made about Sammy Sosa that he could blow you out, but he couldn’t beat you. Meaning being that when the score was 6-1, 8-3 or the like Sammy would pad his stats with home runs and runs batted in galore. But in a tight game, don’t count on Sammy to come through very often. In one-run games the Astros are 15-26, in two-run games they are 10-14. In games that were tied after seven innings they are 3-12. In extra innings they are 5-10. The good news is, all those realities mean nothing when the postseason starts. So long as you’re in the postseason. In games decided by three or more runs the Astros have pummeled the opposition to the tune of 53 wins and 28 losses.

General Manager Dana Brown isn’t an Executive of the Year candidate, but overall he’s been fine this season. Without the Yusei Kikuchi trade deadline acquisition the Astros would likely barely lead the AL West. Brown’s biggest offseason get, Victor Caratini, has done very solid work in his part-time role. Though he has tapered off notably the last month and change, relief pitcher Tayler Scott was a fabulous signing. Scrap heap pickups Ben Gamel, Jason Heyward, and Kaleb Ort have all made contributions. However…

Dana. Dana! You made yourself look very silly with comments this week somewhat scoffing at people being concerned with or dismissive of Justin Verlander’s ability to be a meaningful playoff contributor. Brown re-sang a ridiculous past tune, the “check the back of his baseball card” baloney. Dana, did you mean like the back of Jose Abreu’s baseball card? Perhaps Brown has never seen those brokerage ads in which at the end in fine print and/or in rapidly spoken words “past performance is no guarantee of future results” always must be included. Past (overall career) performance as indicative of future results for a 41-year-old pitcher who has frequently looked terrible and has twice missed chunks of this season to two different injuries is absurd. That Verlander could find it in time is plausible. That of course he’ll find it? Absolutely not. His next two starts are slotted to be against the feeble Angels, so even if the results are better, it won’t mean “JV IS BACK!”

Presuming they hold on to win the division, the Astros’ recent sub-middling play means they have only very faint hope of avoiding having to play the best-of-three Wild Card Series. Barring a dramatic turn over the regular season’s final fortnight, Framber Valdez and Hunter Brown are the obvious choices to start games one and two. If there is a game three, it is one game do or die. Only a fool would think Verlander the right man for that assignment. No one should expect Brown to say “Yeah, JV is likely finished as a frontline starter.” But going to the “back of the baseball card” line was laughable. Father Time gets us all eventually. Verlander has an uphill climb extricating himself from Father Time’s grasp.

*Catch our weekly Stone Cold ‘Stros podcast. Brandon Strange, Josh Jordan, and I discuss varied Astros topics. The first post for the week generally goes up Monday afternoon (second part released Tuesday) via The SportsMap HOU YouTube channel or listen to episodes in their entirety at Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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