Red Sox Fever: the Cure not the Crux?

Bostonist has a hard time getting up to go anywhere when we’re plunked down to watch the Red Sox, especially when summer is turning to fall and we’re working up to the playoffs. As reported yesterday, we’re not the only ones. Emergency Rooms see significantly less traffic during times when the Sox are playing. Bostonist has a bag of puns and axioms we could throw out. We won’t. We’re going straight for the jugular: statistical analysis.
The most watched contests last year (Yanks v. Sox, duh) resulted in a nearly 20% drop of the average volume in the ER during the game. Though they pointed to an increase during a game against the Yankees which most took for a guaranteed loss, viewers were few in numbers, Emergency Room traffic increased. After taking the obligatory course in statistics in college we’ve only applied that knowledge recently to poker hands. We can apply it here and draw the conclusion that though traffic is down during the games, there may not actually be fewer illnesses. The analysis done in this study shows a dip during key Red Sox games in ER traffic, perhaps at 10:45 p.m. when the last out is caught the ER fills up. So it could very well be all about waiting it out. As if 86 years of practice wasn’t enough…

Fenway Photo from Joel Oliveira