Dodgers Win The West, But Aren’t Allowed To Celebrate

Time has shown that this can be an anti-Dodgers website, but I think Tom Lynch and I agree that the pool party on Thursday night wasn’t the biggest concern for the Arizona Diamondbacks. These thoughts are about as close as I’m ever going to get to saying something nice about the Los Angeles Dodgers. Grab your goggles and some SPF 15 and watch the video if you’d like.

Don’t forget to pick up your trash, fellas! Image: Rob Schumacher/The Arizona Republic-USA TODAY Sports

First of all, I think it’s ridonkulous that the D-Backs organization told the Dodgers not to bring the celebration onto the field if they were to win the division this week. This is baseball, which means it is a competition. One of the downfalls of baseball is that sometimes you lose, and when you lose, you have to deal with it. I would have much rather seen the Diamondbacks celebrate a division title, but when you don’t win games, you don’t win titles. Seems elementary, right? Apparently not to anybody in the D-Backs organization…This whole story is so strange because no team has ever restricted other teams from celebrating. It just isn’t fair to the winning team. Obviously, clinching a division is more fun at home, but regardless, the victors should be able to celebrate.

The term “classless” has been thrown around a lot over the past two days about this situation. Do I think what the Dodgers did was “classless”? No. I actually think what they did respecting the D’backs in the most disrespectful and nit-picky way. That doesn’t make any sense, but let me try to explain that. The D-Backs told L.A. not to bring the celebration onto the field, so they went straight to the pool. So technically, the Dodgers followed the dumb orders of the Arizona Diamondbacks. Let’s not pretend that these two teams like or respect each other, so what happened last night was no surprise. The D-Backs come out of this looking like goofballs. In an imaginary letter that I just made up, the team had this to say:

"We’re not a very good team, but since you guys are a good team, could you keep your celebration off the field when you guys win? Also, if you could clean up your cheap champagne and Natural Light spills, that would be great!"

I’m a big proponent on celebrating when you do well and win things, so naturally, I’m siding with the Dodgers on this one. If they want to go swimming to celebrate their division title (which the deserve), then more power to them! Celebrating on the field is one of these things that make September and October baseball so exciting. I don’t care who you are, it is still fun to see teams get into the playoffs. If the Diamondbacks wanted to be tough and classy, the way to go about doing that was after the final out, grab your glove and walk off the field like men. This Diamondbacks season has been disappointing, but acting like a little kid when you lose is just stupid. Also, what’s wrong with letting them celebrate on the field? It’s not like the Dodgers players were going to go dig holes in the outfield and demolish the mound. They would jump around a little, scream some profanity into the cameras, and call it a night–what’s the harm in that?

Diamondbacks pitchers and catchers report in well, not soon enough….

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