Red Sox's dream season leaving fans sleepless
Custodian Bill Cavanaugh is seeing exhausted students and staff drag themselves into the Arnone Elementary School on mornings after the Red Sox play.
"Some kids and a lot of teachers come in and definitely look tired," said Cavanaugh, who also stays up to watch the Sox.
They're not the only ones.
With Major League Baseball and Fox TV starting postseason games about 8:21 p.m., more than an hour past regular season times, Sox fans are struggling to get enough shut-eye these days.
"The last couple of nights have been very tense," said Joe Shea of Abington. "You're tired when the game is done and even more tired when you wake up."
And that groggy, grumpy feeling is going to continue as the World Series begins Wednesday night with the Sox battling the Colorado Rockies at Fenway Park.
Some Sox fans can't watch much past the fifth inning because life doesn't wait for the Sox game to end.
Al LoConte, owner of the Dug Out sporting goods shop in Brockton, said he can't watch the whole game because he has to be at Ikea in Stoughton at 3 a.m. to work his second job. He stays up until 9:30 p.m. on game nights.
Kenny McDonald, 21, of Whitman has been staying up to watch every pitch this postseason, but says he needs more coffee in the mornings. And he has a lot of company waiting in line for a caffeine fix.
Debbie Cote says she needs to buy two cups of coffee the morning after a Sox game rather than just her usual one.
"I try to stay up and watch the whole game," she said.
Maria Gomes of Brockton said getting her two sons off to the Arnone Elementary School is hard some mornings, and her sons only watch part of the game because it runs too late into the night.
It would be better for fans, especially younger ones, if games started earlier, said Dr. Sridhar Dasari, director of Caritas Good Samaritan Medical Center sleep lab in Brockton.
But try telling that to Sox fans who would rather stay up late and then rub the sleep from their eyes, stagger out of the house and guzzle down extra coffee at work the next morning.
The bottom line is Boston fans prefer to sit up at night with red eyes and hopeful hearts. And the doctor had some tips for coping with World Series-induced sleep deprivation.
One is to catch up on sleep on the weekends, if possible, said Dasari.
If their schedules allow, fans also might take a nap during the day to make up for those lost hours of sleep.
Although research shows that the ideal night's rest includes seven to nine hours of quality sleep, those just aren't realistic standards for Red Sox fans in October.
As Brockton resident Bob Gloddy said about his wife, Janet, "She would stay up even if the games started at midnight."
Rob O'Keefe can be reached at rokeefe@enterprisenews.com.