How to wake up your team during a losing streak? Try sleeping in the dugout

Sometimes the best way to jolt a slumping team awake is simply to fall asleep. At least that’s what Vermont Expos general manager C.J. Knudsen was banking on with his team mired in a losing streak during the 2003 season.

The team had just lost five in a row and things were not exactly looking up. Searching for some kind of spark, Knudsen decided that he would spend the night in the first-base dugout at Centennial Field in Burlington, the most populous city in Vermont. But he was cognizant of the fact that one night might not be enough. He vowed to sleep there for as long as it took until the team won a game.

These Vermont Expos were not exactly lighting the world on fire, let’s be clear. They ended up with a 19-56 record in the 2003 season after going 30-45 the previous year. So Knudsen was taking a bit of a risk, staring down an indeterminate number of uncomfortable nights on a rollaway cot in the dugout.

The first night he understandably had trouble falling asleep, and it didn’t help matters that a skunk slunk across the outside of the dugout about a foot away from his head. Then there were the sprinklers that sputtered on at 2 a.m., followed by the incessant seagulls chirping at 5 a.m. All those sounds of the night coupled with the cemetery out near right field made for an eerie scene, and a night of tossing and turning for the wired general manager.

After another Expos loss, Knudsen was back out there the following night, but this time he was not alone. The team’s director of ticket operations joined him, and with each loss another member of the staff packed their pillows for a dugout staycation.

“Pretty soon we had seven people sleeping in the dugout, interns sleeping on the roof,” Knudsen said at the time.

It became a true slumber party, or perhaps more accurately, a slumper party.

As the consecutive losses piled up, fans of the team started to feel for Knudsen and his band of merry outdoor snoozers. They brought homemade brownies and shrimp scampi to keep everyone well-fed and somewhat comfortable. The Expos players, acutely aware of their role in all this, promised to win for their general manager.

He kept on waiting.

After seven nights spent in the dugout, the Expos’ losing streak at last came to an end at 12 games.

“The players ran onto the field like we had won the pennant, and the fans went crazy,” Knudsen said.

His long national nightmare was over, and Knudsen could finally get some good shuteye.

We’re not saying Knudsen's idea will ever be used again to squash a losing streak. But we will say: Don’t sleep on his methodology.