MLB: Champagne celebrations gone right (and wrong)
By Andy Pollin
For a sport that has it’s roots in the 19th century, the champagne-soaking clubhouse celebration is relatively new. And it may not have originated in the grand old game of baseball. Legend has it that the champagne spray dates back to June of 1967 when the American racing team of Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt won Le Mans. As was tradition, the winners were handed a bottle of Moet.
Previous winners took a swig, but Gurney, a non drinker, grabbed the bottle, shook it with his thumb over opening and began to spray the crowd in the winners circle. It caught on. We’ll see more than our share of spraying before the end of the month as the rest of the divisions and wild card spots get clinched. Everybody in baseball now does it.
The actual drinking of champagne to celebrate a championship dates back to 1896 when the Winnipeg Victorias filled up the cup part of the Stanley Cup to toast their title. The NFL doesn’t allow any alcohol in a winning locker room. In the NBA, it’s okay. Kevin Grevey, who played for the 1978 champion Washington Bullets – the last team to win game seven of the championship series on the road, tells a story of poor planning.
As Grevey and his teammates were toasting their title in the visiting Seattle locker room, they realized they had beer, but no champagne. Told that the Sonics had champagne in their locker room, but obviously no use for it, the Bullets’ trainer John Lally was dispatched to try and buy it. The Sonics had no interest in aiding the Bullets celebration. The answer was no.
As the Bullets bus headed toward the team hotel, one of the players noticed a liquor store that was still open. The bus stopped, owner Abe Pollin pulled out his credit card and the champagne celebration was on. No spraying and no ice, but at least they had the traditional bubbly.
In the years since that Bullets championship, everybody in the NBA has gotten considerably richer and so have their tastes. Champagne picked up at a roadside liquor store just won’t do. The Miami Heat celebrated their last championship in 2013 with 100 magnum bottles of Moet Ice Imperial. Fifteen players, a hundred magnum bottles?
There was never a more excruciating moment involving champagne and celebrations than the one that occurred at Shea Stadium during the 1986 World Series. The Red Sox, who hadn’t won a World Series title in 68 years, were an out away from beating the Mets in game six, when things began to fall apart. Bob Costas was in the Boston clubhouse waiting to anchor NBC’s coverage of the Red Sox long-awaited celebration.
Protective plastic was being taped over lockers, carts of iced champagne were being rolled in. And then Boston’s Bob Stanley threw a wild pitch to score Kevin Mitchell and tie the game. That’s when Costas got the word from producer Michael Weisman in the production truck, “Get out of there as fast as you possibly can.”
As Costas and his crew were fleeing, the Mookie Wilson ball scooted through Bill Buckner’s legs. The corks went unpopped. The Mets won game seven two nights later to claim the World Series. Whatever happened to the champagne remains a mystery.
It would take another 18 years for the Red Sox to finally drink the World Series champagne. It tasted sweet, though not as sweet as the bubbly Red Sox fans had been saving since ’86. Like the drink itself, the stories get better with age.
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