Clocks turning back won’t make up for a World Series worth of late nights: expert

TORONTO – Bleary-eyed Blue Jays fans may be looking forward to an extra hour of sleep when they turn the clocks back on Sunday, but an expert says it won’t be enough to make up for a World Series worth of late nights.

Patricia Lakin-Thomas, a biology professor at York University who studies circadian rhythms, said the hours-long games that start as late as 8 p.m. ET have likely thrown many baseball fans’ internal clocks out of whack.

“You’ll get an extra hour of sleep on Saturday night into Sunday morning, and everybody can use that,” she said. “But if you’ve had lots of late nights, lots of disrupted schedules … it will definitely help, but it may not completely erase your sleep debt.”

Lakin-Thomas said people accumulate sleep debt when they lose out on valuable shut-eye, and it takes about a half-hour of sleep to make up for each hour lost.

That means those who stayed up an extra four hours to watch Game 3, which ended at 3 a.m. ET, might need two extra hours of slumber in the following nights to recover.

Maintaining a regular sleep schedule is crucial for keeping important internal cycles synchronized, she said, so those who stayed up to watch all 18 innings of that game between the Toronto Blue Jays and Los Angeles Dodgers may still be feeling it.

And those who are staying up later than usual to watch all the games, including those in the Atlantic time zone where games regularly end after midnight, will need far more than the measly hour offered by Sunday night’s time change.

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She said the best course of action is to try to get your internal clocks in tune with the external one as quickly as possible.

And though it’s too late for many fans to implement, there’s also the Anne Murray approach.

The legendary singer-songwriter and noted Blue Jays fan told The Canadian Press last week that she’s not a stickler for staying up until the end of the game.

“The problem is, you see, I’m in Nova Scotia, so the games don’t start till nine,” she said. “And, I am not as young as I used to be. I can’t stay up too late. So, sometimes I miss the full game, but I get it the next morning.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 31, 2025.