Why baseball teams party so hard and so often in October

October Baseball Turns Every Milestone Into a Celebration

Earthguardiansonline.com – For successful Major League Baseball clubs, October is not simply a series of high-pressure games. It is also a recurring test of preparation, cleanup and endurance inside the clubhouse. A team that keeps advancing through the postseason may celebrate several times before it ever reaches the World Series, with champagne becoming both a reward and a logistical challenge.

That tradition is why the Boston Red Sox receive an unusual late-season delivery when a promising year is nearing its finish: 100 pairs of protective goggles. Their equipment supplier sends another 100 pairs for every playoff round the club survives. The eyewear has a practical purpose. Champagne launched at close range can sting badly when it hits a player’s eyes.

Other major American sports also use multi-round playoff formats, but baseball has developed a particularly enthusiastic culture around celebrating each step forward. NFL locker rooms generally save their biggest festivities for the Super Bowl. In the NHL, early celebrations can clash with hockey’s famously superstitious atmosphere, where lifting the Stanley Cup remains the objective that matters most.

A postseason built around repeated milestones

Baseball’s expanded postseason creates a steady run of reasons to celebrate. Securing a playoff berth can set off the first party. Winning a Wild Card series brings another. A Division Series victory calls for more bottles, and the Championship Series win that sends a club to the World Series can produce an even larger release of emotion.

For players, coaches and staff, those gatherings reflect the strain of a long season as much as they mark a result on the field. The sport’s calendar demands months of travel, routines and daily competition before October begins. Each series victory confirms that the season will continue, while teams that advance farther become increasingly familiar with the rituals of the champagne-soaked clubhouse.

Tom McLaughlin, the Red Sox clubhouse manager, has spent more than four decades with the organization and estimates he has taken part in dozens of such celebrations. He remembers a more restrained version of the ritual when he started during the 1980s, at a time when the postseason was shorter. Today, the final stretch of a highly successful season can feel like an extended run of parties interrupted by baseball games.

Plastic sheeting, ladders and expensive champagne

Behind the scenes, a clinching game brings a substantial amount of work. McLaughlin helps obtain the alcohol and also oversees efforts to protect personal belongings, furniture, televisions and audio equipment. In videos recorded after playoff victories, plastic covering is often visible throughout the room, transforming the clubhouse into a carefully shielded space before the first bottle is opened.

The setup takes about two hours. If a game begins to turn against the home team, staff members can be left waiting on ladders for instructions to remove the coverings. But when a series victory becomes likely, the plastic is indispensable. McLaughlin described the opening stretch of the celebration this way:

“That first hour is intense. It’s crazy.”

Premium bottles of Moët & Chandon and Dom Pérignon are regularly part of the scene, but much of the champagne never ends up in a glass. It is shaken, sprayed and fired in every direction. The result is a room that is wet, sticky and difficult to restore before normal clubhouse operations resume.

Former major league slugger Curtis Granderson described the sensation of being caught in the spray:

“It’s very wet. It’s sticky. If you have like a paper cut or a scrape, it’s getting in there.”

For Granderson, the celebration resembles an oversized water fight, except every participant is carrying a bottle of champagne. Players can spray the ceiling, furniture, teammates, reporters or themselves. The point is less about drinking than joining a moment of collective release after a demanding series.

Being sprayed can be an honor

In a baseball clubhouse, becoming the main target of the champagne is often a compliment. A player who delivered a crucial hit, pitched an important game or helped rescue a team from elimination may find it nearly impossible to speak to anyone without being doused.

Steven Kwan experienced that after his role in the Cleveland Guardians’ Wild Card series comeback against the Chicago White Sox. As champagne and suds poured over him, he tried to respond to a reporter while embracing the chaos.

“I mean, no! God, no! It’s so cold! I feel like I’m being targeted right now. I’m in the ring. I’m trying to survive, but this is a ton of fun.”

Granderson said that during the 12 to 15 celebrations he took part in, he could not recall actually sitting down to drink champagne. Most of it, he said, was used for spraying. He tasted it because it was around his mouth and face, but the bottle was usually better suited to celebration than consumption.

Some of the goggles from those moments now sit in Granderson’s trophy cabinet. They are reminders of achievements that cannot be reproduced simply by replaying highlights. The goggles also represent the small, practical details that become attached to a playoff run.

“Earn the burn”

Not every player chooses eye protection. Granderson recalled that former teammate Michael Cuddyer preferred celebrating without goggles, embracing the sting as part of the experience.

“A teammate of mine, Michael Cuddyer, he was the one saying you got to ‘earn the burn.’ He would always go with no goggles because he loved the fact that it burned his eyes. Because, to get a chance to do that meant you were doing something well.”

The mess can extend well beyond champagne. McLaughlin remembers the New York Yankees celebrating a series win at Fenway Park during the 1990s with food, milk and yogurt also flying around the clubhouse. The team even pulled out a shower hose to add to the mayhem.

“The Yankees of the ‘90s did not get cheated when they had fun.”

For the staff left to clean the clubhouse, the aftermath can be enormous. Yet that disruption is part of what gives baseball’s postseason celebrations their meaning. Each plastic-covered room, pair of goggles and empty bottle signals a result that cannot be taken for granted: a team has won enough to keep playing, and it has earned another chance to make an even bigger mess.