Slowly, bleary-eyed, they emerged into the pre-dawn morning.
It was nearing 6 a.m. Thursday on Washington Street downtown, the day after a second straight Red Sox World Series game lasted deep into the night, and the exhaustion was starting to take hold — particularly for the city’s early-risers.
“I’m paying for it now,” said Brian Schweizer, 37, as he fried up omelettes and sausage patties behind the counter of Archie’s Place in Pi Alley early Thursday morning. He’d watched both of the first two Red Sox World Series games in their entirety, and as a result, had gotten just three hours of sleep Wednesday night before the start of his 5 a.m. work shift.
The Series might be off to a splendid start for the hometown team — the Red Sox hold a 2-0 Series lead heading into Friday’s Game 3 in Los Angeles — but it hasn’t come without some collateral damage to the circadian rhythms of the local fan base.
All over this sleep-deprived region, folks are dealing with the inevitable effects of a pair of late-night games, leaning heavily on caffeine, sheer will, and the promise of the upcoming weekend to make it through the remainder of the workweek.
Game 1 on Tuesday night lasted three hours and 52 minutes, stretching until after midnight; Wednesday’s game was shorter but still went deep into the night. It doesn’t bode well for the Series’ remaining games, meanwhile, that the Sox and Dodgers are notoriously slow, both averaging a league-long three hours and 13 minutes per game during the regular season — or nearly 10 minutes longer than the league average.
All of it has left fans struggling to gut their way through the following day.
In New Haven, Conn., lifelong Red Sox fan Trish Resio has been doing her best to stave off the exhaustion. The day after Game 1, she consumed three cups of coffee — up from her usual one cup — and tried to take solace in the fact that she isn’t the only one zombie-walking through the day.
“You’ll stay up, you’ll suffer for it,” said Resio, who works for the Yale School of Management. “But there’s this camaraderie around it, when you see other fans who are exhausted with you.”
For Tes Kebede, a friendly 46-year-old who’d stayed up to finish Wednesday’s Game 2 despite having to be at work Thursday around 4 a.m., victory also helped.
“I still feel good because of the win,” said the Pi Alley parking manager, before joking: “If they lose and I spend all my time watching, I’m gonna be pissed.”
For some, the late start times and lengthy games have admittedly been too much.
Like a number of sheepish construction workers exiting Dunkin’ Donuts Thursday morning, Jerry Clarke acknowledged that he’d only made it until the fourth or fifth inning of Game 2 before heading to bed — though he offered a reasonable-enough excuse.
Not only does he begin his work as an exterminator at 3 a.m. each morning, Clarke noted, but “I’m still tired from the last time the Bruins won the Cup.”
Indeed, on the plus side, fans of Boston sports teams have had plenty of experience in sports-induced sleep-deprivation.
The 2004 American League Championship Series — in which two of the series’ final four games went into extra innings — provided valuable practice, said Andy Ellis, chief security officer at Akamai Technology in Cambridge. Same for the annual barrage of Patriots’ night games and near-annual Super Bowl appearances.
At the same time, Ellis confessed, he wouldn’t be opposed to seeing the Red Sox sweep the Series on Saturday night in Los Angeles, which would give him a one-night reprieve before what figures to be another late night Monday, when the Patriots take on the Buffalo Bills in a primetime matchup with an 8:15 kickoff.
“I’m a little older now,” he said. “So midnight feels like 2 a.m. did back then.”
In typical Boston fashion, however, fans seem to be gutting their way through it — some inevitable social media grumbling notwithstanding.
Bob Kelley, who for the past 30-plus years has operated a closet-sized Pi Alley key and lottery ticket shop, said there wasn’t much complaining from customers following Game 1. Checking the attendance book Wednesday, meanwhile, Anna Ford, an assistant to the principal at Newton North High School, was a bit surprised to learn that there hadn’t been a boost in tardies and absences the day after the nearly four-hour Game 1 Red Sox victory.
Then again, she pointed out, it was still early in the Series.
“Next week,” she said, “is gonna be a tough stretch for a lot of the fans.”
Indeed, with the potential for another five games in a best-of-seven series — all starting after 8 p.m. locally — the endurance test could stretch all the way to Halloween.
But as the sun began to rise over the city Thursday morning, Adrian Dominguez stood outside a Dunkin’ Donuts, smiling as he squeegee-ed the windows in a bright red Sox jacket.
Working on just four hours’ sleep, the jovial 43-year-old from Lynn knew that come afternoon, he’d surely be feeling the effects of the previous night, when he’d stayed up to watch the final out of Boston’s 4-2 victory.
But the Red Sox now stand just two games from another World Series title, and that thought alone, he said, was enough to propel him through the remainder of his 12-hour shift.
As he put it, standing in the morning chill as the city slowly came to life, “It’s a beautiful feeling.”
Dugan Arnett can be reached at dugan.arnett@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @duganarnett.Bagikan Berita Ini
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