The Los Angeles Dodgers celebrated their National League West title by jumping in the pool at Chase Field. Unsurprisingly, this upset the Arizona Diamondbacks and many of their fans.
ESPN’s Mark Saxon quoted a couple of key figures on the matter:
Diamondbacks president and CEO Derrick Hall said in a statement to the Arizona Republic, “I could call it disrespectful and classless, but they don’t have a beautiful pool at their old park and must have really wanted to see what one was like.”
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“I think it’s tired and disrespectful,” (Diamondbacks utility player Willie) Bloomquist said. “It’s surprising, because they have a lot of veteran guys on that team that I thought were classier than that.”
Even the non-sports community was getting into the discussion. Arizona Senator John McCain also was not fond of the act:
Dodgers relief pitcher Brian Wilson responded to McCain’s criticism with a jab of his own:
ESPN’s Skip Bayless also had to insert his opinion in the matter:
Of course, there weren’t any pools located in the outfield of major league ballparks when Sandy Koufax was playing.
On the other hand, not everyone took issue with the act. The always entertaining Arizona starting pitcher Brandon McCarthy did not see a problem with it, despite being on the losing end. He tweeted this encouraging statement for the future:
The controversial celebration followed a 7-6 road win by the Los Angeles Dodgers on Thursday. This mathematically eliminated the Diamondbacks from the division race, and secured the Dodgers their first National League West title since 2009.
After a relatively awful start to the season for The Boys in Blue, the turnaround into division champs was impressive.
However, Saxon reports that the team had been asked by the Diamondbacks to not celebrate on the field. The players responded by jumping into the pool, which was captured by Fox Sports:
Arash Markazi of ESPN also provided this picture on his Instagram account:
However, not everyone thought it was funny.
This type of celebration started in 2011 when the Diamondbacks clinched the NL West and celebrated in front of their home fans. Still, it’s clear that the squad doesn’t feel that the pool is open for just anyone to use.
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