In team sports, the term home advantage (also called home field/court/diamond/ice advantage) describes the advantage–usually a psychological advantage–that the home team is said to have over the visiting team as a result of playing in familiar facilities and in front of supportive fans. The term is also widely used in "best-of" playoff formats (e.g., best-of-seven) as being given to the team that is scheduled to play one more game at home than their opponent if all necessary games are played.
In many sports, such designations may also apply to games played at a neutral site; as the rules of various sports make different provisions for home and visiting teams. In baseball, for instance, the team designated the home team bats second in each inning, whereas the "visiting" team bats first.
Read more about Home Advantage: Advantages of Being The Home Team, Gaining or Losing Home-field Advantage, Neutral Venues
Famous quotes containing the words home and/or advantage:
“Adolescents are travelers, far from home with no native land, neither children nor adults. They are jet-setters who fly from one country to another with amazing speed. Sometimes they are four years old, an hour later they are twenty-five. They don’t really fit anywhere. There’s a yearning for place, a search for solid ground.”
—Mary Pipher (20th century)
“A regular council was held with the Indians, who had come in on their ponies, and speeches were made on both sides through an interpreter, quite in the described mode,—the Indians, as usual, having the advantage in point of truth and earnestness, and therefore of eloquence. The most prominent chief was named Little Crow. They were quite dissatisfied with the white man’s treatment of them, and probably have reason to be so.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)