(WARRENSBURG, Mo.) – Tickets for the sixth annual Houston Winter Invitation, which will be held at Minute Maid Park from February 2-4, are available for purchase online Thursday. The tournament will feature six Division II universities who will square off in nine games across the three days. Tickets are available for purchase at Astros.com/Invitational.
Daily admission tickets will be sold at $17 for adults, $11 for students and $8 for youth. Children 3 years old and younger are free when accompanied by a ticketed adult.
The Houston Winter Invitational tournament will feature the University of Central Missouri, which co-hosts the tournament with the Astros, Henderson State and the Colorado School of Mines. There will also be three featured schools from Texas including St. Mary’s University, Tarleton University, and Texas A&M University-Kingsville.
UCM, which has co-hosted the tournament since its establishment, is the alma mater of the Astros Owner and Chairman Jim Crane, who was an outstanding baseball player in his collegiate career with the Mules. He played for the Mules from 1973-76, in which he posted a 21-8 record with a career 2.42 ERA. Jim Crane still sitting at the top spot in UCM’s career leaderboards in complete games (23), shutouts (7), and ranked third in strikeouts (215). He holds the Mules and Division II World Series single game record for strikeouts with 18. Crane was inducted into Central Missouri’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 1997, and also earned an induction into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame last year.
Crane is a big contributor to Central Missouri to provide athletic scholarships for Mules baseball. He was also the primary underwriter of $1.2 million renovation in 1998 of the Old Mules field which has be renamed the James R. Crane Stadium. In 2016, Crane and the UCM Foundation upgraded the university’s baseball facility to synthetic turf in efforts to make UCM’s baseball program one of the best in the country.