Angell covered baseball for this magazine for many years, in addition to editing fiction, and although he was ostensibly there to scout the Astros-the team had finished thirty-two games behind the National League-pennant-winning Dodgers the year before-he was distracted from his scorecard by the orange spacesuits and white helmets worn by the groundskeepers, the rainbow-colored tiers of seats, and the billiard-table green of the first synthetic field in pro sports, made of a brand-new Monsanto product called AstroTurf.