I will limit my comments on Game 7 of the ALCS to this: of all the many things for which God should bless the Red Sox*, for me the top choice was their refreshingly old-fashioned locker room celebration. Once a predictable explosion of hyperbutch bonhomie amd vividly homoerotic champagne dousing, such celebrations in the last few years become depressingly wholesome. Basketball players began this process of decline, which is ironic given that the NBA unquestionably has a much higher S.O.B. count than other major sports. Yet S.O.B.s or not, they're the ones that started bringing their children into the fray after significant victories. Their children! Must everything be so toothless and tapioca? Must we poor sports fans be flogged with that sort of faux-humble faux-good-guy theater even at the moments of highest drama? I don't want to see your toddlers astride your shoulders, athletes, I want to see you soaked with booze, hollering yourself voiceless, unabashedly smacking the asses of other half-dressed men. I want to see the cartoonish masculinity of pro sports at its full peacock apex. Thank you, BoSox, for grasping this.

*among the others is the fact that all of their white players look improbably like stoner part-time junior college students