Boston is once again in the World Series — against the Colorado Rockies.
It’s a beautiful thing, yes. But these clubhouse champagne celebrations have
gotten out of hand. At what point did they become as de rigeur as the now-clichéd
Gatorade dousings in the NFL? Major League Baseball seems to have hopped in bed
with Mumm, because the bubbly is not just for
World Series victors anymore.
Now you’ve got your “We Made the Playoffs!”
celebration, your “We Won the Division Series!” celebration, and your “We Won
the League Championship Series!” celebration as well — which begs the
question: doesn’t that cheapen an actual World Series celebration? I sure think
the champagne would taste much sweeter if I drank it only once (not that these
guys even drink the stuff anymore — it sure looks more like swim-goggled
public bathing than anything else).
Yes, I know, we Red Sox fans doth protest too much. Don’t
get me wrong, I’d rather the Sox have
something to celebrate than just get dejectedly hammered down at the Cask ’n
Flagon before leaving for an early off-season. But I’m a patient fan (I mean,
the last championship took 86 years), and I have an attention span long enough
to, say, actually watch the whole playoffs to see who ultimately wins. I don’t
need a celebration a week to keep me, you know, interested. But — no doubt these televised bashes are
highly sanctioned by Bud Selig and his MLB braintrust (if anything with so
small a capacity for analytical thought could be called that) — that’s
not the way our spoon-feeding culture tends to work.
These pre-Big Dance celebrations seem just the sort of thing
that would get your ass handed to you in the National Hockey League
— where the only thing that matters is getting your mitts and name on
the greatest trophy in all of sport. Back in ’97,
then-captain of the Flyers, Eric Lindros wouldn’t even deign to touch the Wales Conference trophy presented to him and the
Flyers as semi-final winners on their way to their first Cup finals in 10
years. It was a fascinatingly stubborn gesture, but the message was clear
enough: we’re not finished our mission.
Unfortunately, the Big E and his mates never did get to
drink from Lord Stanley’s mighty chalice (A pox upon
you, Darren McCarty!), falling to the Red Wings in a four game sweep. But
I have to think the lingering stink of week-old champagne soaked into skate leather
would have made the collapse even more difficult to stomach.
So the dearly departed Cubbies, Phillies, Angels, Yankees,
Diamondbacks, and Indians will always have the Paris of their too-eager clubhouse Festivus (or would that be “Festivi”?). And maybe
some of them are satisfied with that. Maybe it’s outdated and naïve of me to think
otherwise. When you make $10 mil a year or whatever, can you really be
considered professionally unfulfilled for never winning The Big One? Maybe,
maybe not. But I don’t make that kind of cheddar. I get judged at work on
whether I succeed or not. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I do know this: no matter how often your team has celebrated
to this point, you don’t get one of these for
second place.