1) Champagne-, beer- and milk (?)-drenched Angels players jogging out to center field and lovingly tapping the memorial to Nick Adenhart, the rookie pitcher who died in a tragic car accident along with two others after he won his first major league start for the ballclub. Reliever Brian Fuentes also poured victory juice over the Adenhart image's head like the kid's one of the American League West champs. He is.
2) Pitcher Sean O'Sullivan showing off a wide-array of dance moves in the plastic-covered clubhouse, including a tribal booty shake that had the black guys looking at each other saying “Damn!” and Fox Sports West announcer Bill MacDonald remarking, “That's 100 times better than Mark Madsen a few years ago with the Lakers when they had their celebration.”
3) Usually stoic manager Mike Scioscia's smiling widely as he watched O'Sullivan.
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4) Players in the clubhouse drenching Adenhart's No. 34 Angels jersey.
5) Catcher Mike Napoli repeatedly taking swigs from whichever tall Budweiser can was in his hand at the time. Dude will wake up with a killer headache.
6) Shortstop Erick Aybar using a groundskeeper hose to spray the crowd that lingered after the game.
7) An unidentified player using the Champagne-, beer- and milk (?)-drenched plastic floor in the clubhouse as his own personal Slip 'N Slide.
8) Napoli, pitcher Jered Weaver and a couple other players trying to sneak up to drench pitching ace John Lackey as he was being interviewed live by Jose Mota but failing because Napoli slipped and face-planted into the ground. Everyone else then emptied the contents of their cans and bottles on the catcher, who had to be picked up off the floor like a freshman at the Blue Beet.
9) The live broadcast returning from a break to not only see Mota interviewing slugger Vladimir Guerrero in Spanish but hear recorded music blarring in the background having changed from gringo rock and hip hop to Latin rock.
10) Budding Cuban superstar first baseman Kendry Morales doing his best Red Auerbach (or Fidel Castro), smoking a big, fat stogie with an I'm-on-top-of-the-world sneer on his face.
11) Mota starting his interview with Aybar by instructing, “Slowly but in English, okay?” After several broken English sentences (“Evbody do good . . .”), Aybar said it was now up to the team to “work hard so we get to World Series.” “So you can win it,” added Mota. “You know that,” said Aybar in perfect English before wandering off aimlessly.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.