Louise T. Guinther

This year’s post-season locker-room celebrations are yet another example of how the powers that be have taken all the fun out of baseball. Sports used to be a magical realm in which grownups could feel and behave like kids again. Back in the ’70s, when we watched the Yankees win the 1978 World Series on TV, my father wanted us to be as much in the moment as the players on the screen. So he brought out a bottle of champagne and, while the players were joyously and unceremoniously popping corks and dousing each other on our 19″ screen, Dad made it real by pouring his own bottle over our heads, right there on the living-room rug. I’m not sure what my mother thought of this exercise in outlandish silliness, but it is indelibly etched in my memory as a moment of sheer euphoria, high on the (long) list of things that made my father the coolest dad EVER in my eyes.

Nowadays, instead of the spontaneous overflowing of joy and bubbles I remember from my childhood, the TV cameras let us in on a carefully prepared-for ritual, neat and responsible, with plastic sheeting covering everything to minimize the cleanup. Felix Unger would definitely have approved. Taking the responsible-grownup party-pooping one step further this year, the once wild-and-crazy shenanigans were fully tamed by the provision of safety goggles for the players. Heaven forbid that any of those million-dollar stars should get any of that nasty, stingy champagne in their eyes. The celebrations in the ’70s looked like fun. This year’s looked like a bad episode of 9-1-1.

As a rule, I’m all for grown-ups behaving sensibly and responsibly and taking precautions to head off injury, but these celebrations felt a little bit like trying to go puddle-jumping without kicking up any mud. Next thing we know, the football players on the winning team will offer the coach a rain poncho and umbrella before dousing him with Gatorade.

Someone needs to tell the people in charge that TOO much forethought takes all the fun out of the delirium. Just for a few thrilling moments, let the big, serious millionaires be little boys again!