There’s No Place Like . . . the Road

Even carpetbaggers get the blues.

The lame-duck Houston Oilers went 6-2 on the road last season but 2-6 before sparse Astrodome crowds, leading team officials to complain they never had a home-field advantage.

“I hate to think about what another year would have been like,” Oiler General Manager Floyd Reese says. “It was an ugly marriage and it was time for the divorce.”

The good news is, they’re out of Houston. The bad news is, they won’t actually reach their Nashville home until 1999. Until their new stadium is ready, they’ll play in the Liberty Bowl in Memphis--200 miles away.

Memphis was a bitter loser in the last NFL expansion round and has a Canadian Football League team, coached by former UCLA coach Pepper Rodgers.

“If the Oilers want Memphis to be a part of what they’re doing, they need to make a significant effort in this community,” Rodgers says. “There’s a striking difference between Memphis and Nashville.”

Add wanderers: The NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes, nee Hartford Whalers, may have put that mall that housed their arena in their rearview mirror, but they’re not home yet, either.

Bound for Raleigh, N.C., they won’t arrive until a new arena is finished, in 1999.

Until then, they’ll play in Greensboro, 80 miles away, where their welcome has been tepid. Only 3,000 season tickets have been sold in 10 weeks. In that time, the Phoenix Coyotes sold 8,000 and the Colorado Avalanche reached its cap of 12,000.

Trivia time: Among Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron, Jim Rice and Jose Canseco, which one was rookie of the year?

Consumer Guide: Some observations by USA Today’s Mike Lopresti after touring ballparks to find out how fan-friendly baseball is:

--”I still can’t get over Turner Field’s prices. No wonder one of the longest lines I saw all week was in Atlanta. At the automated teller machine.”

--”The Pirates have 48 promotions planned, including free computer mouse pad night.”

--”Milwaukee’s bratwurst took the food award. . . . If only Milwaukee had a team of which its sausages could be proud.”

Trivia answer: Canseco, who won in 1986, when he hit 33 homers, despite batting .240 and striking out 175 times.

And finally: The Celtics’ signing of Travis Knight ended the Laker career of another of Jerry West’s personnel coups.

When the Chicago Bulls renounced their rights to Knight, his agent, Arn Tellem, said he got only one call, from West. Other NBA scouts were so unimpressed by his play at the Phoenix Desert Classic, they called him “Gladys Knight.”