road

A road game or away game is a sports game where the specified team is not the host and must travel to another venue. 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.