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.

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