Advantage?

If all other things are equal, then of course.

There is an adjustment period to playing night games. There is a lighting factor, some places have great lights and some have barely adequate lighting. If you are used to the lights and shadows you will have some advantage......

The advantage however may be slight and brief. This will not level the playing field for an 0-10 team against a 10-0 team. You still have to hit, field and catch the ball.

As an umpire, I experience a few innings of adjustment at night games. Pitches are fine, since usually the lighting at the plate is fine, but fly balls can be a challenge early on.

Yes, the team that has lights and schedules their home games at night will be able to see.

The team that has no lights that schedules their home games at night will not be able to see. (Of course either will the visiting team so I guess they may not have an advantage after all)

Thanks piaa-ump.....you settled an ongoing debate. Our district has no lights at any of its high school fields....we play a team, from another district that does....and they always schedule their games with us at night....son said they were "showing off"....I said thought there might be more to it than that...

There is a definite advantage. We have lights and after day lights savings time (warmer weather) we play all our home games at night. Not because we want to use the lights as an advantage but a 7pm start is better for the fans and the players. Alot of the teams in our area have lights but some do not. We always practice under the lights several times a year to prepare for it.

Gosh. So a school in another district has a field that is lit, and they schedule their games at night? Of course they do! Why do you think they had the lights installed in the first place? It was to play games at night, not to fool schools that don't have lights.

I would be unhappy if they had lights and didn't use them. Do you realize how much it costs to light a field?

I think there is an advantage from the standpoint of a larger home crowd. For the last couple of years we did not have lights (old and no longer were adequate.) Games would start at 4:00 or 4:30 during the week, therefore due to work schedules not many people were able to attend the games. Several of us parents were able to get the school board to install new lights, mainly so games could start at around 7 pm when parents and the community were off from work. It increased our parent and fan attendance greatly. Now our home games have a large home crowd that I believe provides an advantage for the home team. It really added to the look/quality of our field which also boosted the pride of the players.

I don't think any team has an advantage or disadvantage under the lights. Some have already mentioned the convenience of playing later in the evening, and the fact that if a team has lights then they should use them.

I bet there is an infielder in Arizona who will have a few big hits when he plays under the lights!!!

if you are going to play under the lights you should get used to it before gametime. my dad learned this the hard way when he was playing football in high school. they had just recently added lights to their football field, and their first game under the lights was against doug flutie's natick (massachussetts) HS team. losing by a TD w/ the clock winding down in the 4th quarter, his coach called a timeout. my dad said "coach, throw me the ball and we'll win." and so, with time for one play left, my dad got open in the endzone; he looked up for the ball and saw nothing but lights.......
the ball came down and bounced right off his head. game over.

Here in Hades, night games are just a lot more comfortable for players and for old moms. Later on in the spring and in summer for Legion ball it really does warm up around here.