Houston Astros in St. Louis tickets

The Houston Astros are one of the most consistently competitive franchises in Major League Baseball, playing their home games at Daikin Park in downtown Houston. Since their arrival as an expansion team in 1962, the Astros have grown into an American League West powerhouse known for player development, analytics, and deep October runs. The ballpark's retractable roof keeps the Houston heat and humidity at bay, so the atmosphere inside stays loud and comfortable no matter what the weather is doing outside.

Houston entered the National League as the Colt .45s in 1962 alongside the New York Mets, then adopted the Astros name in 1965 when the team moved into the Astrodome, the world's first multi-purpose domed sports stadium. The franchise posted its first winning season in 1972 and its first playoff berth in 1980, then built toward national relevance behind the Killer B's core of Craig Biggio, Jeff Bagwell, and Billy Wagner. That group powered four division titles in the late 1990s and early 2000s and carried Houston to its first World Series appearance in 2005. A pivotal turning point came in 2011, when Jim Crane purchased the club and the organization leaned hard into analytics, rebuilding itself into a perennial contender.

The modern Astros have been one of the sport's defining teams. Behind stars like Jose Altuve, Houston won its first World Series in 2017 against the Los Angeles Dodgers and added a second title in 2022 against the Philadelphia Phillies, with additional World Series trips in 2019 and 2021. The club appeared in seven consecutive American League Championship Series from 2017 through 2023, an MLB record, and won four AL pennants along the way. Houston is the only team in MLB history to win league pennants in both the National and American Leagues, and in 2024 it clinched the AL West for the seventh time in eight seasons. Through the end of the 2025 season, the Astros hold a 5,096-5,040 (.503) all-time record, the only expansion-era franchise with an overall winning mark.

A long list of Astros have earned baseball's highest honors. Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell are both inductees in the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and their numbers 7 and 5 hang among the team's retired jerseys, alongside franchise icons like Nolan Ryan (34). Biggio collected his 3,000th career hit in 2007, becoming the 27th player in MLB history to reach the milestone. Jose Altuve was named American League MVP in 2017 after leading the majors with a .346 batting average, and he has remained the face of the franchise's sustained run of contention.

Astros fans have a distinct identity tied to Houston's role in the space program. The team's lime-green mascot, Orbit, riffs on that NASA connection, and the city's Space City theme shows up in the club's City Connect uniforms. Daikin Park leans into Houston's railroad history too: a replica locomotive rolls across the outfield and sounds its whistle after every Astros home run. Nicknames like the 'Stros and Crush City have followed the team through its biggest seasons, and the ballpark draws a knowledgeable, vocal crowd that expects October baseball year after year.