ShareThis"At 12:51 a.m., the Red Sox players began to celebrate in a closed-door party with cigars, champagne and beers. Their alcohol-soaked hats read: Wild Card Champions."
-- Providence Journal's Joe McDonald in Wednesday's editions.
Wild-card champions?
What, exactly, is a wild-card "champion?"
Whoever came up with that phrase must have been "alcohol-soaked," too.
Wild-card champions is an oxymoron.
Of what do "wild-card champions" boast -- "We're not the best, but we're the best of the rest?"
Bill Reynolds, my colleague at this newspaper, took the Yankees to task in Tuesday's paper for celebrating excessively their clinching of the A.L. East title.
Hey, at least the Bronx Bombers won something. And by a wide margin. The Yankees were clearly superior to Boston over the course of the long season.
That said, whether they continue to be superior in a short series remains to be seen.
At least Red Sox fans are hoping it remains to be seen.
Before taking on the Yankees again, the Sox first have to get past the Angels in the ALDS. That's posed no problems in the recent past as if you go all the way back to the 1986 ALCS, the Red Sox have won 12 of their last 13 postseason games against the Angels, bouncing them from the playoffs three times in the last four years.
None of which has any bearing on the playoff series that begins next week in Anaheim.
The fact that the Red Sox are in the playoffs for the sixth time in seven years is most certainly worth celebrating.
That is the expectation every year -- that Boston will be playing in the postseason. But it's not a given, even given their extensive financial resources, as the exorbitantly spending Yankees found out last year to their chagrin, when they were beaten out for a playoff spot by not only their archrivals, the Red Sox, but also the surprising Tampa Bay Rays, with their paltry payroll.
That embarrassment prompted the Yanks to delve deeply into their considerable coffers to obtain the services of slugging first baseman Mark Teixeira -- luring him away from the Angels and keeping him from the Red Sox, who also waved large amounts of lucre under his nose; along with top-notch starters CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett.
Adding that highly talented trio to a roster that already included future Hall of Famers Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez and Mariano Rivera, as well as the likes of Jorge Posada, Hideki Matsui, Robinson Cano, Johnny Damon, Andy Pettitte and Joba Chamberlain made the Yanks the favorites to win the division.
Which they did, precipitating the popping of champagne corks last Sunday after beating Boston at Yankee Stadium.
"So why," Reynolds wondered, "all the champagne and all the celebration, which on the surface, anyway, seems like much ado about nothing?"
A better question is why all the champagne, all the celebration, in the wee hours of Wednesday morning on the part of the Red Sox, who finished a distant second in the division, but still partied hearty after wrapping up the wild card.
Or, as the marketing mavens at MLB would say, the "wild-card championship."
It matters not that the Red Sox, who snapped a six-game losing streak beating the Indians Thursday night, backed into the wild-card spot.
That's an achievement certainly worthy of a cigar (although not necessarily a Cuban Cohiba, smuggled in from Toronto) and a beer (although not necessarily a premium brew), but certainly not champagne. Not French, anyway. Which is, of course, the only true champagne.
The best bubbly should be reserved for, at the very least, winning the A.L. pennant, if not the World Series.
Winning the wild card "championship" is, at most, deserving of sparkling wine -- perhaps from California.
I've always been struck by the difference in celebrations between the Red Sox and the Patriots.
When the Pats win the division, they merely don commemorative caps. There is no popping of champagne bottles, even cans of beer. The goal is winning the Super Bowl. That, to the Patriots, is the only win truly worth celebrating.
It's markedly different in baseball.
I don't fault the Yankees for celebrating, although the champagne may have been a bit over the top. I don't fault the Red Sox for celebrating, although the champagne certainly was over the top.
What's ludicrous, however, is being a wild-card "champion."
The Red Sox aren't "champions" of anything right now.
But they have a chance to be, and that's worth celebrating --- although not to the same extent as the Yankees deserve to celebrate their 10th division title in 12 years, but first since 2006.
(Contact Jim Donaldson at jdonalds(at)projo.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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Must credit The Providence Journal
