The road to the Hall of Fame is long, for players and fans. Craig Biggio, and a few others, will be able to say it began at the Astrodome on a summer afternoon a few decades ago, wound through a ballpark in downtown Houston and ended in Cooperstown, N.Y., on Sunday.
In the summer of 1988, Steffi Graf was ruling the tennis courts. Lloyd Bentsen was getting ready to tell Dan Quayle he was no Jack Kennedy. A movie ticket cost $4. And I was more a fan of spectacle than of sports. When good grades got me an unexpected pair of tickets to a baseball game in Houston, a trip to the Astrodome sounded like a good a way to spend a Sunday afternoon.