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Article published Sep 20, 2013

Tuning In: O'Brien cutting through Red Sox ads, high pitch counts

Bill Doyle Tuning In

If you enjoy watching the Red Sox, but think the games last too long, Bill O'Brien has a solution.

O'Brien, 57, of Worcester tapes the games and doesn't begin watching them until about an hour and a half after they've started. Then he fast-forwards between pitches and during commercial breaks.

O'Brien tries to delay catching up to the live action for as long as possible to avoid having to watch Dustin Pedroia step out of the box and repeatedly readjust his batting gloves between pitches and view that barrage of Southwest Airlines ads with the ballerina leaping in the air. He's actually never seen that absurd Head & Shoulders commercial with Angels pitcher C.J. Wilson standing on the field without a cap, something baseball players never do unless the national anthem is playing.

So while a Sox game may last three or even four hours, O'Brien watches all the important action in about half that time. It's a quite economical way of watching the Sox, and that's fitting because O'Brien teaches economics at Worcester State University.

Some friends have copied O'Brien's way of watching the Sox, but he admits that his son, Jay, thinks it's silly.

"Most people would like to watch it live, and I understand that," O'Brien said. "You don't get those heart palpitations in between pitches by fast-forwarding."

O'Brien still has to stay up late to watch the end of games, but he's a night owl.

While watching his 46-inch Panasonic plasma from his brown Lazy Boy recliner, O'Brien makes sure the television isn't tuned in to NESN when he turns it on to avoid seeing the live score before he switches to his DVR. O'Brien has learned to turn off his cellphone because he has received text messages from happy Sox fans spreading the news about a great play or an exciting victory before he witnessed it.

He places his Bose speaker system in front of the bottom of the TV screen to block the score crawl when he switches back and forth between games he has taped.

O'Brien doesn't fast-forward as much when the Sox bat, but he fast-forwarded on the fastest speed when Daisuke Matsuzaka used to rack up long pitch counts for them. O'Brien's DVR has four speeds, one is regular, two is slightly faster, three is even faster and four is fastest. Sometimes while O'Brien exchanges messages with his students on his laptop, he plays entire games on two, giving him his own version of Sox in two.

He fast-forwards through all replays because he creates his own replays. He rewinds and replays close plays in slow motion by clicking twice on his play button. When a Red Sox was thrown out at the plate in the ninth earlier this season, he replayed it six times in slow motion before he could tell that the ump blew the call.

By fast-forwarding so often, O'Brien doesn't get to hear much of the announcers. Even when he's not fast-forwarding, he keeps the volume down pretty low.

"I hear enough of them," he said. "They say the same things all the time."

O'Brien has also learned to extend the taping for three hours longer than the game is scheduled to end.

"I've had games run out because of rain delays," he explained.

O'Brien can tape up to two games at once. One Thursday night, he taped the Sox game and the Baltimore-Denver NFL game. He turned on the Sox at 8:45, an hour, 35 minutes after it started and fast-forwarded through the first six innings until 9:30 p.m. He was catching up to real time, so he switched to the Denver game. That game started at 9:10 instead of 8:30 because of lightning. So he fast-forwarded his tape on the fastest speed to watch the opening kickoff.

O'Brien watched the Denver game, fast-forwarding between snaps, long enough so that he could switch back to the Sox and not catch up to live action as quickly.

When the Pats and Sox played on the following Thursday night, he turned on the Sox at 8:30 for 45 minutes. Then he switched to the Pats and watched the first half while fast-forwarding through commercials, then switched back and forth between games. Fast-forwarding between plays isn't as easy with the Pats because they use a hurry-up offense so often.

Interestingly enough, when friends visit, O'Brien never fast-forwards through the video he made of his vacation this summer to Ireland.

Contact Bill Doyle at wdoyle@@telegram.com. Follow him on Twitter @BillDoyle15.

Copyright Worcester Telegram & Gazette Corp.