1976 Houston Astros season
Major League Baseball season
The 1976 Houston Astros season was the 15th season for the Major League Baseball (MLB) franchise located in Houston, Texas, their 12th as the Astros, 15th in the National League (NL), eighth in the NL West division, and 12th at The Astrodome. They entered the season as having tied for the most losses in franchise history, at the time, with a 65–97 record, and the most games behind first place, 43+1⁄2 behind the division-champion and World Series-winning Cincinnati Reds.
On April 8, J. R. Richard made his first of five consecutive Opening Day starts for Houston, at Riverfront Stadium to face Cincinnati, but were defeated, 11–5. The Astros attained an all-time franchise record 25 hits on May 30. The Astros' first round selection in the amateur draft was pitcher Floyd Bannister at first overall. Bannister became the Astros' first-ever number one overall draft pick. On July 9, Larry Dierker tossed the fifth no-hitter in franchise history, a 6–0 win over the Montreal Expos.
Center fielder César Cedeño and pitcher Ken Forsch were selected to the MLB All-Star Game; it was the fourth time Cedeño and first for Forsch. Pitcher Robin Roberts, who briefly played for Houston in 1965 and 1966, became the first former Astro to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
On August 9, Cedeño hit for the cycle at Busch Memorial Stadium, the second of two he hit for the Astros, highlighting a 13–4 win over the St.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “1976 Houston Astros season” as major League Baseball season. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as major League Baseball season. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4577165. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1976, 1965 and 1966.
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This entry incorporates text from “1976 Houston Astros season” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.