Toning down a baseball rite

This postseason, the baseball clubhouse has seen a twist to its ritualized, made-for-television Champagne celebration: the ginger-ale spray.

Twice now, Texas Rangers teammates of Josh Hamilton, the tattooed slugger whose team is in the World Series opposite the San Francisco Giants, have doused their most valuable player contender with soft drinks instead of the Champagne they kept for themselves in a separate celebration.

It was a respectful acknowledgement of Hamilton’s sobriety after a past of drug and alcohol abuse.

Now Major League Baseball is making its latest attempt to crack down on the alcoholic version of those celebrations.

Last week, on the eve of the World Series, the league quietly issued new guidelines to teams, said Rob Manfred, M.L.B.’s executive vice president. Teams must limit Champagne; offer a non-alcoholic version; beer and other types of alcoholic drinks are banned; and teams are not allowed to bring the drinks on the field.

“We have concerns that these celebrations that have traditionally been held not get out of hand,” Manfred said. “This is an issue that we periodically revisit.”

Hamilton’s ginger ale bath is a sideshow to what has become a choreographed ritual of baseball, one that increasingly causes purists to cringe at the over-the-top emotion they see as unsportsmanlike, and serves every autumn as a reminder of the enduring and sometimes ugly place alcohol has had in the baseball culture, stretching back to the 19th century when the precursor to the American League was known as the “beer and whiskey” league.

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