Jeff Bezos is a very silly man and one with surprisingly little imagination for someone who reinvented retail. There he was, back in October, out in the desert. Standing next to him was William Shatner, agog. They had just landed after a trip in Bezos’s semi-spaceship. Their feet on the ground, the actor famous for playing the captain of a “starship” was sputtering with amazement, trying to express how profound the experience had been to him.
How did Bezos react to Shatner’s moving expression of honest emotion? By calling for a bottle of Champagne. Not for drinking, mind you, but for shaking and spraying and spritzing, the tacky show put on by race car drivers, from the three-place podia of Formula 1 to the individual winners of NASCAR oval-track contests.
Such trite rituals — let’s call them “trituals” — have become all too common and all too tiresome. Instead of adding to the excitement of an event, they make it predictable and pedestrian. Here are some examples of trituals that could stand to be retired.
Let’s start with the Champagne business. Half a dozen years after the first man made it into outer space — cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in 1961 — the champagne stunt got its start. The credit (actually, the blame) is usually given to Ford’s Dan Gurney. When the Americans beat Ferrari at Le Mans in 1967, he got his hands on a bottle of Moet and, in his exuberance, shook it up and let loose.
Now it’s become an obligatory and entirely predictable spectacle. Top finishers take their places on the podia and are promptly handed jeroboams full of fizz. The drivers act like hyperactive children drenching themselves and others with the bubbly. The hilarity is forced, and the routine is altogether too routine. What was a spontaneous and ecstatic act the first time it was done has long since become a grandstand kabuki.
The Gatorade bath. The locker rooms of championship-winning baseball and basketball teams are known for gushers of champagne. But the drenching ritual most known to Americans is played on the gridiron, with the faux-sneaky dumping of icy Gatorade over the head of the winning head coach. It was funny once. Maybe even twice. But it has long since become a tritual. It is, however, one that shows signs of finally overstaying its welcome. Georgia coach Kirby Smart put the kibosh on any power drink shenanigans in the Bulldog’s defeat of the Michigan Wolverines in the Orange Bowl. The expectation is that he won’t be able to refuse a dousing if his team beats Alabama in the national championship game. But one can hope.
The kissing of trophies: Holding a trophy aloft, that I can understand. In a crowd, it is reasonable to get the prize up in the air where it can be seen. But kissing the trophy? It shares this with the Gatorade bath: Though it may have been an honest expression of giddy excitement the first time it was done, now it is a forced bit of what actors call “stage business,” a routine that has been found to work with an audience and thus is done the same way night after night.
The donning of the green jacket at the Masters. Golfers are not kings. Nor are they knights. They should not be invested in royal raiment. And anyway, have you seen the green jacket? Of course you have. And your reaction was, “Who wears Pantone 342 anyway?” Members of Augusta National of course, and they’re welcome to it. But let’s have no more ceremonies in which sport coats are presented as if they were the Congressional Medal of Honor. One might similarly object to the medal ceremonies at the Olympics, but at least the things being draped over the champions are actual medals. On second thought, perhaps the Masters should keep its tradition but take a tip from antiquity. A victorious Roman general would parade in a toga of purple and gold. Let’s have the Masters winners celebrate their triumph by being draped in bolts of mulberry velvet.
These “iconic sports traditions” are like a groom smushing wedding cake into the face of his bride. That is, they have been done too many times as it is and probably aren’t particularly appreciated by those getting sprayed, smushed, and drenched.
Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?
