Oklahoma Sooners transport truck carries team equipment for road games.
A road game or away game is a sports game where the specified team is not the host and must travel to another venue.[1] Most professional teams represent cities or towns and amateur sports teams often represent academic institutions. Each team has a location where it practices during the season and where it hosts games.
Thus, when a team is not hosting a game, the team is described as the road team, the visiting team, or the away team, and the game is described as a road game or an away game for that team. The venue in which the game is played is described as the visiting stadium or the road. The host team is said to be the home team.
The home team is often thought to have a home advantage over the visiting team, because of their familiarity with the environment, their shorter travel times, and the influence that a parochial crowd may have over an official's decisions. A home team advantage that is unique to baseball is familiarity with the home ballpark's outfield dimensions and height of the outfield wall, as well as the size of foul territory and location of in-play obstacles (e.g., a bullpen on the playing field). Major sporting events, if not held at a neutral venue, are often over several legs at each team's home ground, so that neither team has an advantage over the other.
When a team is not the host, it must travel to games (usually by bus or car, hence "road"). Teams take planes for longer journeys and often stay overnight in hotels if same-day return trips are unfeasible, due to geographical spread of the league's other teams (even intra-divisional rival teams may be quite distant from the away team's home city). Professional teams commonly use charter flights or even privately-owned aircraft, since travel arrangements are often hectic, especially if back-to-back games involve an away game. For some teams that are the designated away team for several consecutive contests due to league scheduling, they embark upon extended road trips that may often be nearly two weeks away from their home. Players may occasionally have off-days during their long road trips to relax or see the sights in cities that they visit. [2][3]
Historically, the longest road trip in sports (in terms of time taken, which may never be eclipsed due to modern means of travel by air) was made by the Dawson City Nuggets who embarked upon the 4,000 mile (6,400 km) journey to Ottawa over several weeks, travelling by dog sled, bicycle, foot, train, and ship. The exhausted Nuggets players were handily defeated by the Ottawa Hockey Club in the best-of-three series of the Stanley Cup challenge.
Occasionally, the road team may not have to travel very far at all to a road game, if their upcoming rival team venue is located in the same metropolitan area. In such cases the road team can practice at its own venue, while its players can stay in their in-season homes. These matches often become local derbies. A few times a year, a road team may even be lucky enough to have the road game played at their own home stadium or arena. This is prevalent in college athletics where many schools will often play in regional leagues or groundshare.
The related term true road game has seen increasing use in U.S. college sports in the 21st century, especially in basketball. While regular-season tournaments and other special events have been part of college sports from their creation, the 21st century has seen a proliferation of such events. These are typically held at neutral sites, with some of them taking place outside the contiguous U.S. (as in the case of the Great Alaska Shootout and Maui Invitational) or even outside the country entirely (such as the Battle 4 Atlantis in The Bahamas). In turn, this has led to the use of "true road game" to refer to contests played at one team's home venue.
In some association football leagues, particularly in Europe, the away team's fans sit in their own section. Depending on the team's stadium, they will either sit in a designated section or be separated from the home fans by a cordon of police officers and stadium officials. The reason of this arrangement is to prevent conflicts between fans in rival teams, which is a real concern in European association football leagues due to football hooliganism. However, semi-professional leagues, supporters may be free to mix.[4] When games are played at a neutral site, for instance the FA Cup final in England which is always played at Wembley Stadium, both teams' fans will be allotted an even number of tickets, resulting in each team occupying one half of the stadium. This is different from other sports, particularly in North America, where for the most part relatively few fans travel to games played away from their home stadium, with a handful of exceptions for teams with large fan bases such as the Pittsburgh Steelers in American football or the Toronto Maple Leafs in ice hockey. Home and away fans are also not separated at these games.
The original Yankee Stadium was located in the Bronx in New York City. It was the home of the New York Yankees from 1923 to 2008, except for 1974–1975 when it was renovated. It hosted 6,581 Yankees regular season home games during its 85-year history. It was also the home of the New York Giants National Football League (NFL) team from October 21, 1956 through September 23, 1973. The stadium's nickname is "The House That Ruth Built" which is derived from Babe Ruth, the baseball superstar whose prime years coincided with the stadium's opening and the beginning of the Yankees' winning history.
The Major League Baseball All-Star Game, also known as the "Midsummer Classic", is an annual professional baseball game sanctioned by Major League Baseball (MLB) and contested between the all-stars from the American League (AL) and National League (NL). Starting fielders are selected by fans, pitchers are selected by managers, and reserves are selected by players and managers.
Choctaw Stadium, formerly Globe Life Park, is an American multi-purpose stadium in Arlington, Texas, United States. The venue opened in April 1994 as a baseball stadium with the name The Ballpark in Arlington, serving as the home for the Texas Rangers of Major League Baseball from 1994 through 2019. It replaced the nearby Arlington Stadium, and was succeeded by Globe Life Field.
Kauffman Stadium, often called "The K", is a baseball stadium located in Kansas City, Missouri. It is the ballpark to the Kansas City Royals of Major League Baseball (MLB). It is part of the Truman Sports Complex together with the adjacent Arrowhead Stadium, home of the Kansas City Chiefs of the National Football League (NFL). The stadium is named for Ewing Kauffman, the founder and first owner of the Royals. It opened in 1973 as Royals Stadium and was named for Kauffman twenty years later on July 2, 1993. Since its last major renovation in 2009, the listed seating capacity is 37,903.
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Tropicana Field is a multi-purpose domed stadium located in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. The stadium has been the ballpark of the Tampa Bay Rays of Major League Baseball (MLB) since the team's inaugural season in 1998. The stadium is also used for college football, and from December 2008 to December 2017 was the home of the St. Petersburg Bowl, an annual postseason bowl game. The venue is the only non-retractable domed stadium in Major League Baseball, making it the only year-round indoor venue in MLB. Tropicana Field is the smallest MLB stadium by seating capacity when obstructed-view rows in the uppermost sections are covered with tarps as they are for most Rays games.
The Polo Grounds was the name of three stadiums in Upper Manhattan, New York City, used mainly for professional baseball and American football from 1880 through 1963. The original Polo Grounds, opened in 1876 and demolished in 1889, was built for the sport of polo. Bound on the south and north by 110th and 112th streets and on the east and west by Fifth and Sixth (Lenox) avenues, just north of Central Park, it was converted to a baseball stadium when leased by the New York Metropolitans in 1880.
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Cleveland Stadium, commonly known as Municipal Stadium, Lakefront Stadium or Cleveland Municipal Stadium, was a multi-purpose stadium located in Cleveland, Ohio. It was one of the early multi-purpose stadiums, built to accommodate both baseball and football. The stadium opened in 1931 and is best known as the long-time home of the Cleveland Indians of Major League Baseball (MLB), from 1932 to 1993, and the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League (NFL), from 1946 to 1995, in addition to hosting other teams, other sports, and concerts. The stadium was a four-time host of the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, one of the host venues of the 1948 and 1954 World Series, and the site of the original Dawg Pound, Red Right 88, and The Drive.
In team sports, the term home advantage – also called home ground, home field, home-field advantage, home court, home-court advantage, defender's advantage or home-ice advantage – describes the benefit that the home team is said to gain over the visiting team. This benefit has been attributed to psychological effects supporting fans have on the competitors or referees; to psychological or physiological advantages of playing near home in familiar situations; to the disadvantages away teams suffer from changing time zones or climates, or from the rigors of travel; and in some sports, to specific rules that favor the home team directly or indirectly. In baseball and cricket in particular, the difference may also be the result of the home team having been assembled to take advantage of the idiosyncrasies of the home ballpark/ground, such as the distances to the outfield walls/boundaries; most other sports are played in standardized venues.
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A multi-purpose stadium is a type of stadium designed to be easily used for multiple types of events. While any stadium could potentially host more than one type of sport or event, this concept usually refers to a specific design philosophy that stresses multifunctionality over specificity. It is used most commonly in Canada and the United States, where the two most popular outdoor team sports—Canadian football or American football and baseball—require radically different facilities. Football uses a rectangular field, while baseball is played on a diamond with a large outfield. Since Canadian football fields are larger than American ones, the design specifications for Canadian facilities are somewhat less demanding. The particular design to accommodate both is usually an oval, although some later designs use an octorad. While building stadiums in this way means that sports teams and governments can share costs, it also presents some challenges.
The Lancaster Red Roses were a professional basketball team based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. From 1946 to 1949 and from 1953 to 1955, they played in the Eastern Professional Basketball League, of which the Red Roses were one of the six original teams. The Red Roses also played briefly as the Lancaster Rockets. They were members of the Eastern Basketball Association from 1975 to 1978, and the Continental Basketball Association from 1979 to 1980. The Red Roses were members of the American Basketball League briefly in the 1946-47 season, where they were known as the Lancaster Roses.
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