The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1910-02-15
Teams No Longer Have Great
Advantage at Home.
Detroit Tigers Had Road Aver
age o. .532.
TOM STANDARD SOLD.
Denver's Hard Hitting Second
Baseman Goes East.
Lineup of Sioux City Has Many
New Faces.

It isn't the home team that always
gets the gravy in baseball. Of course,
baseball managers and critics will tell
you that there is certain advantage
in playing games at home, but it's
the teams that can cop good share
of the home shows and an equal
amount of matinee bills abroad that
usually finish on the rungs near the
top of the ladder, says an eastern
baseball writer.
The days of yore, when injuries OF
life and body were the order of the
day and the things to be expected by
the visiting team, have passed. NO
longer do the methods of the mobs
and players of Pittsburg, st. Louis,
Baltimore, and other big league cites
obtain in organized baseball. NO
longer are the members of visiting
teams followed to their bus by
peering and haunting crowd and ston-
ed and dubbed until the driver OF
the vehicle has whipped his horses to
q speed that has distanced the tor
mentors of the club who had the tenn
Gritty to win game upon foreign
grounds. No longer is the odious title
of homer" given to an umpire VINO
is. supposed to favor the home team
or else incur the displeasure of the
home crowd; in these days umpires
give their decisions as they see them
without fear or favor. And no long
er does the home team have the long
end of the betting odds on account of
the benefit they are supposed to de-
rive from being on home grounds
and playing before home crowds.
In these days when the umpires
are the sole judges of play and back
ed in everything they do by the chief
executives of their respective leagues;
in these days of ample police pro-
lection at the parks the visiting team
has an equal chance with the home
players, and it will be seen that some
of the clubs win oftentimes a major
ity of the games played abroad.
Detroit Road Team.
Witness: Detroit was a fairly good
home team the past season, but they
We're also real classy on the road. The
same was true in 1908. Time and
time again Connie Mack, Larry La
joie, Jim McAleer, and even Joe Can
tillon piloted a team to Detroit that
succeeded in trimming the terrible
Tigers claws. On the road, however,
Tyrus Cobb ran wild on the bases,
that is, wild in his own way; Sam
Crawford, Claude Rossman and one
or two others put little more effort
into their work, drove out more hits,
the pitchers put on more steam, with
the result that the Tigers were a far
superior baseball aggregation on the
road than at home. In the seventy
seven games played away from home
Jennings men won forty-one and lost
thirty-siX, having an average of .532.
Their best record was against st.
Louis, winning eight out of ten, and
their worst efforts on the road were
against the Athletics, from whom
they were able to get only three out
of eleven games.
The Tigers were not the only ones
to prove the assertion that a team
must possess almost as much class
the road as at home to be near the
top at the finish, during the past sea-
son, for Connie Mack'S Athletics, who
kept American league championship
in doubt until the last week of the
season. showed they were just as
good when they visited their three
neighbors in the east and their four
cousins in the west, as they were
when cavorting about the new dia-
mond at Shibe park, Philadelphia.
The Athletics had even a better
average on foreign grounds than the
pennant winners, having won forty
six out of seventy-seven games when
touring the provinces, getting an av-
erage of SOC. They found Washing
ton the easiest winning nine of the
eleven games played in the capital
city. The Chicago White Sox were
hold, Mack's boys getting the short
end of the eleven games played in
the Windy City, winning only five.
The Boston Red SoX, who were
trouble makers for the leaders all
during the season, had an average of
l percentage mark more than the
Tigers, winning forty out of seventy
five games played abroad, for an av-
erage of .533. Washington was the
easy mark for Boston, losing three
out of the eleven games played. De-
troit was the unlucky city for the