Boston Red Sox

While the Boston Red Sox were sweeping the St. Louis Cardinals in the 2004 World Series, Red Sox director of IT Steve Conley hardly felt like an 86-year curse was lifting.

Despite the Series sweep that broke the club's championship drought, the computer system running the club's video archiving program kept going on the fritz. "The system crashed four times in four games," Conley says. "We were crossing our fingers that it would come up. That drove us to go to a new system."

The Red Sox consider video archives a crucial part of their success. Management identifies it as a major reason for Dave Roberts' stolen base in the ninth inning of a victory over the New York Yankees

when Boston trailed the playoff series three games to none. The triumph started Boston on an eight-game winning streak that carried through the World Series.

"In the sixth inning of that game, Dave Roberts pulled up every at-bat he could find of [Yankees reliever] Mariano Rivera pitching with a runner on first base," Conley says. "He played that on a loop. He was trying to gain an edge. Then he went in as a pinch runner in the ninth inning, stole second base and scored, and we turned things around. Having that video was another tool in the shed."

That's why Conley was nervous when the system broke down in the World Series. After the Series, Conley decided to scrap his HP ProLiant Server and MSA SAN. He looked at SANs from EMC and Hitachi Data Systems."We wanted something that was simple to set up, was bulletproof, and could be supported in every city we travel to," Conley says.

He decided to go with the EMC. It didn't hurt that EMC is a local firm and was pursuing a sponsorship deal with the Red Sox around that time.

The Red Sox purchased a Clariion CX700 for their offices at Fenway Park and a CX500 to take on the road. Each has about 5 Tbytes of capacity. The club travels with every at-bat from 2005 and selected clips from 1999 through 2004 on its Clariion. EMC configured the road system with a special case to survive the grind of a summer of road trips. Conley's staff synchronizes the systems when the team returns home.

"We travel with more data than anybody else," Conley says. "We travel with a Clariion, server, and five or six laptops. We get the game feed in the clubhouse, and our video coordinator Billy Broadbent captures every at-bat on a laptop. You can't have technology in the dugout, so players go back into the clubhouse and watch."

None of the Red Sox's three IT staffers travel, so Broadbent serves as IT man on the road, setting up the systems that run a software program called Bats designed for digital audio. Conley says at least 10 other major league teams use the video program sold by Sydex Computer Systems, but he doesn't know of any others who travel with their own SAN. "Clubhouse guys on the other side can't stand when the Red Sox visit because we come with an 800-pound box," he says.The Red Sox almost lost their travel SAN last year when it fell 14 feet to the ground while it was being loaded on an airplane at the Baltimore airport. Fortunately for Boston, it was the last game before a three-day All-Star break. The Red Sox called EMC's support team, and the system needed only minor repairs. It was ready to go by the next road swing.

Conley says technology was a major focus when the current ownership took over the club in 2002. Besides the video system, the Red Sox store scouting and statistical reports, financial information, and broadcast support applications on their SAN. Still, Conley says the IT budget is around $1.5 million -- or about the price of a utility infielder. And it's hard to determine ROI for a SAN that has little direct financial implications.

"The baseball operation's happy," Conley says when asked about the SAN's major benefit. "If it's not available, the players are beside themselves. They don't understand the video system, they say, 'Just get another' if it doesn't work. Some of it might be plain old baseball superstition, but the players depend on it."

Then again, if it were just superstition, they would have stuck with the HP system they used to win the World Series.

Dave Raffo, Senior Editor, Byte and SwitchOrganizations mentioned in this article: