McAdam: Popping champagne this early falls a little flat

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The League Championship Series have yet to begin, and already, I've lost track of baseball's beer-and-champagne-soaked clubhouse celebrations.

They began in September, when playoff spots -- including wild-card spots -- were clinched. They continued in the first week of October when the two wild card games were won, and extended for another week when the division cChampionships were decided.

So, that makes for 10 regular seasons celebrations, two wild card parties and four Division Series blowouts.

All of this before a pennant has been won.

The LCS winners will spray each other silly, and so too, will the eventual World Series winners.

So, if you're scoring at home, baseball will present no fewer than 19 celebrations by the time a champion is crowned.

Isn't this a little excessive? Embarrassing, even?

Look, I'm no prude. And I'm willing to conceded that being a professional athlete is the only occupation in the world that encourages workers to toast their on-job performance by holding a televised bacchanal.

(Set a new sales record in your office this week? Exceed third-quarter goals? Well, why not revel in your accomplisment by running around half-naked and pouring alcohol over your unsuspecting co-worker?)

But things have gotten out of control. And for that, we can (partly) blame TV.

TV networks love to show the out-of-control revelry. They all love to go live to the inner sanctum, where some beefy slugger is answering
questions while wearing goggles as a river of Korbel cascades over them.

It makes for good TV -- emotion, joy, celebration.

But how many times can we watch the same tableau played out on our screens? At some point, it becomes tired and cliched and not a little self- indulgent.

No one is suggesting that players shouldn't revel in winning a round and advancing. The baseball season is long and arduous -- six months of playing nearly every day, with grueling travel and uneven sleep schedules. There's a lot of time spent away from home, and when one counts spring training, a baseball player has already invested nearly eight straight uninterrupted months of hard work just to reach the end of the regular season.

Surely, that counts for something.

But the no-stop frat parties are becoming stale and a bit over-the-top.

On Thursday night, a jubilant Mets team covered the visiting clubhouse in Dodger Stadium with sheets of plastic, soaked them with beer and proceeded to create a booze-filled Slip-and-Slide?

What's next? D-Day from Animal House riding through on a motorcycle?

In addition to the tiresome sameness of the soirees, the accomplishments themselves become devalued. When it's impossible to differentiate a team celebrating victory a wild-card play-in game (unstated rallying cry: "We're no worse than the seventh [or eighth] team in the game!") from a team standing as the ultimate champion, something gone terribly wrong.

In no other sport do these first-, second- and third-round celebrations take place. Imagine an NBA team taking a beer bath for emerging from a first-round series. Or an NFL team whooping it up because it won a wild card contest and is now just three more wins from the ultimate price.

I say all of this fully understanding that this fall alone, a number of teams qualified for the playoffs for the first time in a long time.

The Mets hadn't played in the postseason since 2006, the Astros since 2005 and the Blue Jays since 1993. The Cubs had gone more than a century without clinching post-season series at Wrigley.

Congratulations to them all. The regular season can be an endurance test and there's undoubtedly a feeling of accomplishment from moving on, on winning a first-round series.

But how about a little context, a bit of perspective?

You won a wild card game, or a Division Series? Bully for you. Shake hands with your teammates, crank the music and savor the moment.

Until you win a pennant, however, do what every other sport does with a bottle of Champagne: keep a cork in it.

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