"Buffs". They were named after Houston's Buffalo Bayou, which has always been a geographic and culturally significant hallmark of the city. Houston Astros Houston joined Major League Baseball in 1962 when the National League expanded and placed a franchise in Texas for the first time. The team's original nickname was the Houston Colt .45s, a reference to the famous Colt firearms company. The team itself used a Colt .45s logo, but was most often called just the "Colts", a somewhat ambiguous term as it also applies to young horses and skirted the legal issues that eventually influenced the name's abandonment by the club. In 1965 the team changed its nickname to Houston Astros, a name that had more futuristic overtones (astro is Greek for "star") as since 1961 Houston was the city where NASA trained (and continues to train) all the American astronauts. The team also used the nickname as part of its new home, the Astrodome, which opened in 1965. This name change was driven in part by legal considerations. The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide for 1965 explained why the team was renamed: "Late in the year 1964 the Harris County Domed Stadium was officially named the Astrodome after the Houston club changed its nickname, December 1, from Colt .45s to Astros. The move resulted from objections by the Colt Firearms Company to the club's sales of novelties bearing the old nickname." The nickname 'Stros is often used as a familiar name. Kansas City, Missouri Being at the fringe of the old west, and thus connected with cowboys and cattle, several of Kansas City's teams have had nicknames reflecting that culture. There were three different short-lived major league teams in the 1800s, members of the Union Association in 1884, the National League in 1886, and the American Association in 1888 and 1889. The 1880s were the peak years of the great western cattle drives, and Kansas City the biggest of all cow-towns; it was inevitable that sportswriters would tag these men from the Wild West as "Cowboys." The minor league entry in the Western League (original) in the late 1890s was the first to be called the Kansas City Blues, presumably from their team colors. The Western League became the American League in 1900, still a minor league. When the American went major in 1901, the Kansas City entry was dropped. A revived minor league club also called