A toast to waiting

The Tampa Bay Rays have had three raucous, champagne-and-beer-soaked clubhouse celebrations, all of which will be rendered irrelevant if they don’t have a fourth.

Some public school systems pay students just for attending class. In major league baseball, you get to have a big party, sometimes several of them, just for attending the playoffs. The Rays celebrated after clinching a postseason berth, celebrated again after winning the American League East and celebrated one more time after beating the Chicago White Sox in the AL division series. They have had an amazing season, winning nearly 100 games and defying all expectations in rising from last place to first. But they have won nothing of real substance yet. They are, in fact, in danger of blowing something of real substance if they can’t close out the Boston Red Sox on Saturday or Sunday.

Aren’t you supposed to win an honest-to-gosh championship, say, a pennant or a World Series or a title that doesn’t include the words “division” or “wild-card,” before breaking out the bubbly? So much liquid has doused the heads of baseball players the last few weeks that many wore goggles. It’s been one big Halloween party, and everyone is Michael Phelps.

If the Rays somehow steady themselves after their Game 5 meltdown and win the pennant and the Series, they will have had five post-game splashfests. No sooner does the stench of dried alcohol fade than it’s time to do it again. This is not a good thing; the players might get overly used to it. “Honey, look, I just toasted an English muffin! Where’s the Piper Heidseick?”

Even the Red Sox, who are accustomed to celebrating actual, significant achievements, have done it.

That’s because in baseball, everybody does it.

Baseball is the only sport afflicted with premature celebrations. In other sports, no one celebrates until the big finish. The plastic sheets stay off the lockers until somebody wins the Big One and there literally is no tomorrow on the schedule. In baseball, except for times of tragedy like the 1989 Bay Area earthquake and the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the jumping and the mobbing and the spritzing before winning an actual championship is an annual rite of fall.

After his Phillies won the NL East (and celebrated, of course), Chase Utley said, “We’re not done yet.” Thanks for the reminder. But you wouldn’t know it for all the cork-popping and mound-mobbing scrums going on. It’s like the movie Groundhog Day, except here, it’s New Year´s Eve on a continuous loop. It wears thin. Champagne goes flat and so do celebrations, if you keep having them. Baseball has become partied out.

No doubt about it, Tampa Bay has been remarkable after 10 losing seasons and nine last-place finishes in their 10 years of existence. What happened this year was and continues to be extraordinary. After clinching the first playoff berth in franchise history, the players took a victory lap for their home fans. The joy is understandable.

Joy aside, it was just a step, a ticket for the big ride. For all their prior celebrating, the Los Angeles Dodgers, who lost to the Phillies in the NL championship series, won’t get to the World Series. Neither will the Rays or the Red Sox. In that regard, the losers will exactly resemble last year´s Green Bay Packers and San Diego Chargers, who had fine seasons and ended up as footnotes.

Those teams made the playoffs and won their early round games (the Chargers won two), but any celebrating was low-key and out of the public view. Fluids were dispensed in the proper manner, that is, internally. The post-game scene included a nice speech from the coach and maybe a big cheer, but mainly, it was peel off the tape and get ready for next week.

Except for some tears, the locker room remained dry after the emotionally charged Redskins got into the postseason last year. And they actually had good reason to go bonkers, given how they rallied on and off the field after dealing with real adversity, not the two-game losing streak kind. The Los Angeles Lakers made it to the NBA Finals, and after each of their three series-clinching victories they just got dressed. Hockey has it right. You drink champagne only after winning the Stanley Cup, and then you get to drink it from the Stanley Cup.

Baseball´s support of the sparkling beverage industry is admirable, especially during these difficult times. But all this hoo-hah is too much. How did we get here? Maybe it’s part of the affirmation movement that says every kid gets a gold star, or money for going to class. Now, every baseball player gets a Budweiser bath.

Ultimately, this might be one of those cosmic questions inherent to the game, meaning it has no real answer. As former manager Buck Showalter postulated, “Why do we let a pitcher fake to third and fake to second, but can’t fake to first and can’t fake to the plate?”

In other words, baseball more than any other sport has its quirks and customs, and we pretty much leave it at that.

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