It’s getting dark for the Boston Red Sox. Anyone who’s been watching the Major League Baseball playoffs know the New Englanders were hammered Monday night, 9-1. A loss tonight to the ever-annoying Tampa Bay Rays could spell Doomsville for Beantown.

Tonight, I’ll be cheering for our Northeast neighbors ... in the dark. Turner Broadcasting, which is covering the American League playoffs, and Sharp Electronics have been promoting the “Lights Out Challenge” all month: Americans are being asked to conserve energy by turning out lamps during the game.

By registering on the Internet’s TBS.com site, people will let broadcasters and electronics guys know how many people across the nation have received the message and made the switch. By signing up, people are also eligible to win a new Sharp TV.

Yeah, I know it’s really an advertising gimmick, but I like the idea. People seem to light up their entire houses at night, and it’s not really necessary. When I was a kid, my father would admonish us to turn off the lights in a room we had just left. “Whaddya think, I’ve got stock in the electric company?” was one of the usual laments. He was right — why should the bathroom light be on if nobody is in the bathroom?

I never have many lights burning after dark, I live like a vampire. I’ve got a bunch of night lights plugged into kitchen sockets, a three-light plastic “candle holder” in the sun room (you know, one of those plastic Christmas candle holders), a fluorescent light in the living room that clicks on and off a couple times during the night. When I’m watching movies on my 46-inch Olevia flat screen — an electronic companion since 2007 — I generally turn off the lights anyway. I’ll light a few candles for light and atmosphere; I’ll start a fire for extra helpings of both.

I hope game stats show how many people participated in the “Lights Out” experiment. Anything that saves energy and helps the environment is my kind of experiment.

I wonder what green boosters would think about my general policies — I will leave on my fluorescent living room light all night, as cop friends used to tell me indoor lights are a great security boost. Criminals might think twice about breaking into a house where some insomniac might be on the couch reading the old Gazette.

Another wonder — the aforementioned Christmas candelabra is always on. It holds three “C-sized” Christmas tree lights, and I don’t think it soaks up that much juice. I figure if I plug it into a timer, the switch will turn it off during the day. But I’ll still be using electricity to run the timer; I expect I’m spending the same amount of money to keep the room lighted all the time (and it’s pretty much dark 12 hours a day now) than it would to run my candelabra with the timer.

Tonight, it won’t matter. I’m planning a personal blackout ... hope they aren’t planning one at Fenway Park!

One last thought: I wonder what the eye doctors say about this challenge. I always thought the party line from the opthalmology camp was: “If you’re watching TV, watch with a light on in the room!”

And as long as we’re talking about TV, baseball and commercials ...

I railed last week about all those crummy “Frank TV” ads TBS was jamming down our throats. I think I know every one by heart now. There are just too many commercials during the games.

I couldn’t finish the 5-hour-plus Red Sox-Tampa Bay game Saturday night — I was just bushed, and gave up around 11 p.m. or so, when the game was in the seventh inning. I think baseball players usually get two minutes between innings to warm up in the field and at the plate, and that’s when we get commercials. For the playoffs, however, it’s more like 2 minutes and 45 seconds — I timed the breaks. The big money networks pay to Major League Baseball means they’ve got to cram in dozens of ads each game to recoup their investment.

You want to speed up the games, and maybe end these marathons? How about 45 seconds between innings; when I was playing softball, we were in the field and ready to go in less than a minute. The pros can do the same thing. Knocking two minutes off each half inning through 8 innings saves 32 minutes. That goes up to 34 minutes if you count ads in the middle of the ninth, if the home team needs its last raps.

It makes a difference in a 5-hour game!

But it will never happen, and people shouldn’t really blame the networks. Baseball charges big money for broadcast rights because teams get their cuts ... and teams have to pay players ridiculous salaries. So blame the players and ever-scheming team management.

For now, we’re stuck with nearly three minutes between innings. I try to make a game out of it — throw some laundry into the washing machine, wash a few dishes, bring in some firewood. I’m generally back in my Colossus — a big, blue overstuffed chair — by the inning’s first pitch.

Oh, and someone might say, “Hey, you’re seeing the game for free.” True enough ... but when baseball decides to go pay-per-view for October games (and still packs games full of commercials), fans will start drifting away. Olevia and I will be going to the movies.