By JOCELYN NOVECK
AP National Writer
NEW YORK (AP) -- When the New York Yankees clinched their spot in
the World Series last week, the casual TV viewer might have
wondered if they were about to go swim the 200-meter butterfly
with Michael Phelps.
Call it a fashion statement for the very rich and very happy:
There they were, stars like CC Sabathia, Mark Teixeira and
Johnny Damon, sporting swim goggles to protect their eyes from
the victory Champagne being poured, squirted and sprayed amid
the post-game revelry.
It's become a more familiar sight in the past few years in the
locker rooms of baseball's top teams. And some die-hard fans
aren't too happy.
Sure, they say, it's important to preserve those valuable eyes.
But the eyewear sure looks a little goofy, doesn't it? And more
importantly, it suggests a broader problem, these fans say:
Post-game celebrations have become too predictable, with all
that unspontaneous Champagne-pouring.
"I guess it was funny when they first poured Champagne on
somebody, but it's just too prepared, too scripted now," says
Matt O'Donnell, a high school history teacher and baseball fan
in Sebastopol, Calif. "The way they have the plastic tarps all
laid out in the locker room, and they have the goggles already
set up there."
O'Donnell, 39, is an ardent Boston Red Sox fan (his 4-year-old
son's middle name is Fenway, after Fenway Park.) "Please, No
More Champagne Goggles!" he pleaded on his baseball blog in
September, when his team was about to clinch a playoff spot.
After every big victory, he complained, the plastic sheets go
up, "and then a few players will put on the readily available
ridiculous looking champagne goggles and begin spraying their
teammates. A manager or coach will inevitably be sprayed with
bubbly ... and the perpetrator will think it is the funniest
thing ever. Yawn."
Patrick Stimson agrees. "Why can't they all just go into the
clubhouse and celebrate naturally?" asks the 28-year-old Oakland
A's fan. "What I like is spontaneous moments."
And while the goggles don't lessen any of his respect for the
top players, he does see them as a sign that today's athletes
may be getting a little softer.
"It just seems like something the older, more hardened players
of yesterday wouldn't wear - not something you'd have seen on
Babe Ruth or Pete Rose," says Stimson, who lives in Los Angeles
and works in online marketing. "There's a notion that today's
players are coddled, multi-gazillionaire athletes, and maybe
this is an outgrowth of that."
On his own baseball blog, Stimson recently posted the question
of whether Champagne goggles were ever acceptable - or whether
it made the players seem, well, wimpy. "Most people thought it
took away some of their manly nature," he says.
Talk to an eye doctor, though, and you'll be converted to the
pro-goggle side with the speed of one of Sabathia's fastballs.
Champagne has a high alcohol content, high enough to damage the
surface lining of the cornea, says Dr. Matthew Gardiner,
director of emergency ophthalmology services at the
Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. (For those medically
inclined, the lining is called the epithelium.)
"A corneal abrasion like that usually heals within two to three
days, but it can be extremely painful while it's healing," says
Gardiner.
In other words, you don't want your ace pitcher or hitter
nursing a corneal abrasion while taking on the next team, as the
Yankees did a few days after their pennant victory against the
Los Angeles Angels, facing the Philadelphia Phillies for the big
prize. (The series stands 3-2, Yankees.)
For Jane Heller, the well-being of her treasured Yankees is the
key concern - much more important than how silly they may or may
not look in goggles.
"I see all these posts, saying gee, what sissies," says Heller,
a lifelong Yankee fan in Santa Barbara, Calif., who blogs about
the Yankees on "Confessions of a She-Fan," and has written a
book of the same name. "But it doesn't bother me."
What bothers Heller more is what the goggles might represent:
"These quote-unquote celebrations have become so calculated and
neat and tidy now," she says. "It used to be a spontaneous burst
of enthusiasm. There was no plastic tarp covering everything."
Heller notes that the goggles are a relatively new phenomenon,
something she first noticed in 2007. "I noticed that one player,
Doug Mientkiewicz, was wearing them during a celebration," she
says.
At the National Baseball Hall of Fame's library, researcher
Gabriel Schechter can't pinpoint when the first Champagne
goggles were donned, but he says it's only in recent years.
(Champagne celebrations, on the other hand, have been around
since the 1950s, when they took the place of beer.)
"It might just be that they're using so much more Champagne now
that it's really hazardous," says Schechter.
One important baseball fan doesn't know anything of the goggle
tradition. "Really?" asks W.P. Kinsella, whose novel, "Shoeless
Joe," became the movie "Field of Dreams."
"It sounds so calculated," the author says. "Just so you don't
get a little Champagne in your eyes." (Kinsella, a huge fan,
says he hates watching the celebrations and always turns the TV
off anyway once the game is over.)
Hazards aside, fans like Brian Welch may find it hard not to
stifle a giggle when they see the next World Series champs don
their swim equipment on Wednesday or Thursday, when the series
ends. "I think the goggles are hilarious," says Welch, 34, a
Cincinnati Reds fan who lives in Chicago.
But he hopes the victorious Yanks or Phillies, with finally no
games left to worry about, will throw caution to the wind - or,
more like it, to the spray.
After all, says Welch, "Maybe it's good to save your eyes before
you go on to the World Series. But once you've won, hey. You've
just won the World Series! Suck it up. Get some Champagne in
your eyes!"
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