» 
» 
» 
» 
» 
» 
» 
(AP Photo/Kathy Willens, File)
FILE- This Oct. 11, 2009 file photo shows New York Yankees' pitcher CC Sabathia celebrating in the locker room after the Yankees defeated the Minnesota Twins 4-1 in Game 3 of the American League division baseball series in Minneapolis. The Yankees swept the series.
NEW YORK— When the New York Yankees clinched their spot in the World Series last week, the casual TV viewer might have wondered if they were about to go swim the 200-meter butterfly with Michael Phelps.
Call it a fashion statement for the very rich and very happy: There they were, stars like CC Sabathia, Mark Teixeira and Johnny Damon, sporting swim goggles to protect their eyes from the victory Champagne being poured, squirted and sprayed amid the post-game revelry.
It's become a more familiar sight in the past few years in the locker rooms of baseball's top teams. And some die-hard fans aren't too happy.
Sure, they say, it's important to preserve those valuable eyes. But the eyewear sure looks a little goofy, doesn't it? And more importantly, it suggests a broader problem, these fans say: Post-game celebrations have become too predictable, with all that unspontaneous Champagne-pouring.
"I guess it was funny when they first poured Champagne on somebody, but it's just too prepared, too scripted now," says Matt O'Donnell, a high school history teacher and baseball fan in Sebastopol, Calif. "The way they have the plastic tarps all laid out in the locker room, and they have the goggles already set up there."
O'Donnell, 39, is an ardent Boston Red Sox fan (his 4-year-old son's middle name is Fenway, after Fenway Park.) "Please, No More Champagne Goggles!" he pleaded on his baseball blog in September, when his team was about to clinch a playoff spot.
After every big victory, he complained, the plastic sheets go up, "and then a few players will put on the readily available ridiculous looking champagne goggles and begin spraying their teammates. A manager or coach will inevitably be sprayed with bubbly ... and the perpetrator will think it is the funniest thing ever. Yawn."
Patrick Stimson agrees. "Why can't they all just go into the clubhouse and celebrate naturally?" asks the 28-year-old Oakland A's fan. "What I like is spontaneous moments."
And while the goggles don't lessen any of his respect for the top players, he does see them as a sign that today's athletes may be getting a little softer.
"It just seems like something the older, more hardened players of yesterday wouldn't wear _ not something you'd have seen on Babe Ruth or Pete Rose," says Stimson, who lives in Los Angeles and works in online marketing. "There's a notion that today's players are coddled, multi-gazillionaire athletes, and maybe this is an outgrowth of that."
