Bubbly after baseball could be thing of the past
Posted: Thursday October 08, 1998 10:22 AM
The champagne shower is in trouble again. Have you read about that?
Baseball commissioner Bud Selig has noticed that players on various teams
have celebrated their postseason good fortune by pouring champagne over
each other's heads and he is looking at the propriety of it all.
You know, these are modern politically correct times and, you know, the
kids are watching. You don't want to give the kids the wrong impression.
Already the NBA and the NFL have tried to put the kibosh on the
sight of athletic heroes pouring an alcoholic beverage on each other in
moments of great joy. Baseball is following the modern pattern. If the
kids don't see Jim Leyritz or
some other famous face covered with champagne, well, the kids will be all
right. The players presumably will shake each other's hand now at
the end of the World Series and adjourn for a quiet celebratory snack of
cookies and milk. The kids, who have not noticed the beer billboards in
the background, the billion beer advertisements between every inning, the
talking beer frogs, the frosted beer glasses, and the fat man who dances
with a large dog because the dog brought him a 12-ounce can of amber brew,
will be rescued from a life of desolation. It's all pretty amazing.
Take away the postgame champagne celebrations and alcoholism, one of
society's greatest ills, will be ended in America. Yeah, and those
talking beer frogs will fly. Sports Illustrated senior writer
Leigh Montville appears regularly on CNN/Sports Illustrated.
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