Baltimore Orioles: Another upside-down game

One of the lasting images of the 2015 season will be the Baltimore Orioles having to travel to Tampa to host the Tampa Rays at Tropicana Field. We all know the circumstances that caused that series to be moved, although it’s something to which we’ll look back as the off season progresses. But we saw a similar situation this weekend in college football, as the University of South Carolina had to move a home game with LSU due to floods at home.

This was almost an identical circumstance as what happened with the Orioles. The game was played at LSU’s home stadium in Baton Rouge, with South Carolina as the home team. First off, there’s no question that sometimes real life circumstances dictate that sporting events should take a back seat. That was certainly true in Baltimore back in April, and it’s true for South Carolina now. Sports can be a great way to help us forget real life for a few hours – but when circumstances get overly severe real life also has to come first.

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There are certain variances in baseball that are dictated by being the home team or the road team, so perhaps in the case of the Orioles in Tampa it played a bit more dramatically. Here you have the Birds wearing their home whites, and Tampa on their own field wearing their road grays. The O’s also had their last at-bat’s – and the fact is that managers coach games differently sometimes if they’re home or away.

In this case, South Carolina got to choose the jersey colors, and they had ironically picked white. LSU wears white at home, so South Carolina was going to make them travel to their campus and wear the purple jerseys they don’t wear too often. But other than that, LSU was limited to a 70-man travel roster for the game, they got to call the coin toss as the visiting team, and their band played the South Carolina alma mater song. (Similar to the Orioles’ series in Tampa, once LSU was reimbursed for it’s costs of operating the game, the rest of the tickets, parking, and concessions sales went to South Carolina.)

2015 wasn’t the first time we had seen teams playing “home games on the road” as a result of real life circumstances. Ironically perhaps the most famous example is the New Orleans Saints “hosting” the New York Giants at the Meadowlands after Hurricane Katrina. The Toronto Blue Jays also “hosted” the Philadelphia Phillies one year in Philadelphia (due to the G8 conference), and the Miami/Florida Marlins “hosted” Seattle at Safeco Field the next year due to a concert at Pro Player Stadium.

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It’s perhaps much more dramatic in a case like that of the Orioles, South Carolina, or the Saints – when it involves real life circumstances. However I would submit that this movement to play these displaced games in the other team’s stadium is a poor one. Whether it’s MLB, the NFL, or anyone else, the visiting team’s home field is the last place that the games should be played.

On one hand, I do subscribe to the notion that you should be ready to play where and whenever the schedule dictates. However in most of these cases you have a team that’s already beleaguered by what’s going on in their home market. They then have to play a “home game” as a de facto away game? In my view there’s just something wrong with that no matter how you look at it.

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In the case of LSU and Tampa, the “visiting hosts” both appeared to be very welcoming. However it’s not just a matter of which team’s fans are in the stands. It’s a matter of having the true benefits of being the home team. There’s something to be said for sleeping in your own bed before a game, being in your own locker room, and knowing the nooks and crannies of the stadium in which you’re playing. Those are all intangibles when it comes to playing at home or on the road, but they do mean something.

The O’s can’t complain too much, because they took two-of-three in that Tampa series. (South Carolina wasn’t quite as lucky yesterday.) However the fact is that this will happen again – both in baseball and in other sports. Is there not a better alternative, such as perhaps moving the game(s) to a nearby city? Granted, teams and people probably do the best they can given uncertain circumstances. However it just seems overly opportunistic for the road team to basically reap the benefits of the fact that the home team can’t host the game.

Next: Baltimore Orioles: What's a post-season mentality

Baltimore Orioles: Another upside-down game

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