BP Boston Unfiltered: Exploring How Much Time You Wasted Watching Friday's Game

On Friday night, the Red Sox and Yankees played a baseball game that officially lasted six hours and forty-nine minutes.

That doesn’t fully do this game justice, though. That’s because in the 12th inning of the marathon 19-inning affair, the light towers behind home plate went dark causing the umpires to stop play despite the field being more lit up than any spring training or minor-league field, as Jerry Remy pointed out. The umpires walked on and off the field trying to figure out what was happening, Red Sox players went back to the dugout, and by the end of it 16 minutes had been added to the total game time. In reality, the game ended about seven hours and five minutes after it had started. That’s seven hours and five minutes you’re never, ever, ever getting back.

What’s funny is that Wade Miley was cruising to start the game and people were raving about the crisp pace compared to the typically excruciatingly slow Boston-New York contests. That’s what we get for being happy.

Seven hours and five minutes is a long time to be watching a baseball game. The time we spent watching could have possibly been spent doing something more productive. What could you have been doing, you ask?

1. If you were so inclined, you could’ve hopped in a car at Fenway at the start of the game, driven to Yankee Stadium, turned back around and driven all the way back to Fenway, then turned around again. You would’ve made it to Newton Center on your trip back to New York when the game ended.
2. Maybe you’d rather watch a movie. You could’ve watched Titanic twice and, unlike Jack, had five extra minutes to spare.
3. More of a Tarantino fan? You could’ve watched Pulp Fiction two full times. You could continue to watch for a third time and make it about 75 percent of the way through, making it to the scene at Jimmie’s house with The Wolf.
4. Been meaning to catch up on Breaking Bad? In the time of Friday’s game you could’ve watched the entire first season, the first episode of the second season and gotten 33 minutes into the second season’s second episode, plenty of time to see Walt and Jesse spend an afternoon at Tuco Salamanca’s hideout.
5. If traveling is more your thing, you could’ve taken a flight to Amsterdam so that you could enjoy……the sights.
6. Maybe you’re one of those weird people who actually exercises. If you run marathons at a world-record pace, you could’ve completed three of them and made it through 45% of your fourth.
7. If you can swim at a world-record pace, you could’ve swum the English Channel and still had ten minutes for rest after you finished.
8. If you found yourself in Boston, you could’ve taken 4.72 guided tours on the Freedom Trail. You were probably better off watching this game.
9. If, for some insane reason you enjoy taking standardized tests, you could’ve taken the full SATs once. Then, if/when you failed, you could’ve gotten through 89 percent of the test on your second go-around.
10. I think we can all agree that playing N64 would be the best way to spend this time. You could’ve fired up Mario Kart 64 and completed 212.5 laps on Rainbow Road while the Red Sox and Yankees both refused to win a baseball game.

Photo by Kelly O’Connor, sittingstill.smugmug.com