Baseball playoffs and winos

It's long been a tradition in many sports that champions pop the corks on a bunch of bottles of champagne. Rarely do they actually drink it, but rather pour it over each others' heads and otherwise spray it around.

Somewhere, homeless winos watching these spectacles shed tears. What a colossal waste of the "good stuff". While hardly a wine connoisseur myself (yuck), how do I know this? Because the good stuff has corks. The cheap stuff has screw caps. And when it comes to celebrations, there's NEVER any screw caps.

And the winos have a point. Why waste so much prime bubbly when there's so many other less expensive options available that would do just as well?

Beer comes to mind. A few cases of long-necked Blatz or Milwaukee's Finest would serve the purpose at a far lower cost. Shake em up, pop the top, and presto -- instant booze fountains, sticky hair, and a custodian's nightmare. But OK, traditional dictates this be about wine.

Still, if they're not going to drink it, why not consider other more cost effective options? Give them a few cases of Mad Dog to go berserk with. In years past, yours truly has indeed seen people go berserk while under the influence of that stuff. A case, no pun intended, could be made it would better serve the common good of mankind for that particular brew to be sprayed around rather than ingested.

And there's another cheap wine company as yet another option. You know who they are, and they feature lots of different flavors to boot.

Break out a few cases of Green Apple Quickstep, Raspberry Hard-On Lemonade, Mountain Oysterberry, or even Pina's Colonada. The players won't know the difference. After an hour or so of celebrating, they just head to the showers and wash it all off anyway. The janitor with the mop bucket pops a couple T-Rex strength headache pills and goes to work cleaning up after the millionaires.

But this whole celebration thing has spun out of control. As an example, consider a wild-card playoff team from Major League Baseball. They popped the bubbly when they qualified for post-season play. After a one-game knockout with the other wild card, if victorious, they sprayed more good stuff around. The KC Royals and SF Giants are in this category.

If they're successful in their AL/NL division series playoff, a few more cases will bite the dust. Then on to the AL/NL championship series. A win there means pop, pop, pop times a couple hundred MORE bottles.

And oh my. Then the World Series. Put the high class French and Italian vineyards on notice. Whoever wins the Fall Classic is going to want a boatload of SERIOUSLY good stuff for the celebration afterwards. It just wouldn't do to pour a bottle of Blind Melon Chitlin over a billionaire owner's head in his locker room, when a few thousand more measly bucks (ironically enough -- of his money) could have resulted in His Highness being treated to the gentle flow of Chateau Le Riche, vintage old, lovingly cascading over his tete and finely tailored suit. Pretty sure an owner wouldn't want to be hosed down with Rolling Rock.

Nevertheless, that's the point. Between qualifying for the playoffs and eventually becoming World Series champions, some team will have celebrated at least 4 times, and possibly 5. Count the other ones that fell along the way, but still partied in their locker rooms.

And that's a whole lot of liquor being wasted. It seems excessive, and could certainly be put to better use elsewhere.

Besides the winos mentioned above -- don't they realize there's sober people in China?