Monday, January 11, 2010

Fenway Park South, M&T Bank Stadium North, & the Visting Team Takeover

Albert Breer of The Boston Globe took notice of the large number of Ravens fans in Foxboro for Sunday's Patriots game, writing "Fenway Park South, meet M&T Bank Stadium North." Ah, yes, another case of the all-too familiar visiting team takeover.

How many times have Baltimore fans heard a quote like the one below from the Patriots' Vince Wilfork during baseball season?
"It felt like we were playing an away game, that’s what it felt like," said sixth-year Patriot Vince Wilfork. "Even if we’d moved on from here, we probably would’ve played two away games, back-to-back. I’m telling you, for all this team’s done in the past … I don’t understand it."
If memory serves, Brian Roberts and Aubrey Huff - among others - have said similar things about fan support at Camden Yards when the Red Sox are in town. So Sunday's Foxboro takeover could be viewed as a form of payback for jilted Orioles fans.

While it's nice to see the Ravens get solid fan support on the road, the "revenge" motif isn't all that satisfying for me. I'm more concerned with defending the home turf regardless of season. Here's hoping the O's can fill Camden Yards with hometown fans again sometime soon.

Still, you can add Wilfork's quote to the taste-of-your-own medicine cabinet alongside Kevin Youkilis' complaint last spring regarding the lack of fan support for Team USA baseball.
“It definitely hurts a little bit to know that you’re always the away team in your own country,” he said. “There are some good people out there, but it would be nice to have a lot more of those people chanting ‘USA,’ holding up American flags. That’s the one thing we didn’t see much of the other night – there were more Puerto Rican flags than American (flags).”
Regardless of the uniform he wears, no player likes to feel like a visitor in his home park.

-30-

3 comments:

Kevin Lomax said...

I'm going to be honest here...that makes me feel awesome.

Revenge is a dish best served cold and it was freezing this weekend in Boston. Besides, crab soup is better than chowda.

I'm with you though in your sentiment about defending the home turf too. We all need to band together to take back the park. To say we aren't going to stand for it anymore. If we can't do it with numbers than we need to make it such a miserable experience for Red Sox fans that they don't want to come back.

Roar from 34 said...

Thanks for the comment, Kevin. It is nice to see some pride related to a Baltimore sports team. I badly want the same thing for the Orioles.

NestMinder said...

I hope one day we'll be able to take back the yard, but this, along with that stomping the Ravens laid on the Patsies, is some delicious revenge.