The football team drives down the field. The QB finds a receiver open in the end-zone and hits him. Touchdown!!! The camera shows the QB pumping his fist in the air and pointing at the receiver. The cameras pans over to the receiver who pumps his fist twice and points back at the QB. Then- wait! The receiver pumps his fist a third time. The ref throws a penalty flag for unsportsman-like conduct. Now they’ll be kicking off from the stands. The NFL is very strict about how you can celebrate and how much. They don’t want any trouble, they say.

Oh.

Behind 2-1 in the eighth inning, Joe Smith slams a two-run homer. As he circles the bases, he pumps his fist a thousand times. The baserunner waits at homeplate doing a jig. As the slugger crosses the plate the whole team comes out, jumping around, to pat him on the back. Trouble? No.

Oh, once in a while the pitcher, who’s already pissed at giving up the homer, watches the celebration and decides to pat the slugger on the back too, real hard. Trouble? You bet. Maybe the catcher is just standing there and gets a little bump. He decides to bump back. Trouble in baseball land? You bet. Now both benches empty and the fight is on.

Understand, this is a baseball fight, not to be confused with a “bar” fight or a “real” fight. No punches get thrown, no one gets hurt. It like a fifth grade fight.

“Oh, yea!”, one kid says and punches the other guy in the shoulder.

“Yea!”, the other guy replies and punches a shoulder.

This goes on until they get bored or lose their audience. Sometimes, though, they’ll be a guy named Chuckie and it’s a little different.

“Oh, yea!”, one kid says and punches Chuckie in the shoulder.

“Yea!”, Chuckie replies and punches the kid’s lights out.

“Wht wzz thtt?”, the punched-out kids says, or tries to say through his split lips.

“I don’t sissy fight”, Chuckie tells him.

There are no Chuckies in Major League Baseball. Throw a punch in the minors, one punch, and that’s your whole career. You can hit a ball a mile or throw it 125 mph and you won’t get to the majors.

Dr.Hip-Al-Hop does a triple axle and dunks the ball, shattering the backboard. Then he does a boogie. Does the other team care? Nope. They might even applaud if Dr.Hip-Al-Hop’s moves are pretty cool. Not his basketball moves, his celebration moves.

In hockey, if you score 5 goals, you are going to win. No one comes back to score six. So, ahead 6-1, the center scores a goal. Up goes his arms! He skates around for a minute and gets a bunch of hugs from his teammates. Does the other team, being made to look stupid, get mad and start a fight? No, unless they were going to start one in the first place, which is always the wat to bet. That’s always a possibility in hockey. What they do is wait for the ensuing face-off. When the ref drops the puck, the losing center drops the other center by trying to take his face off with the stick. A hockey stick is nothing more than a boomerang with a long handle.

Now you have a fight! Not a baseball fight, a real fight, a brawl, a bloody, free-swinging fight. Teeth go flying and sometimes parts of faces. The team doctors get their needles and stitches ready. Imagine, a sport that keeps a doctor on the bench, or needs to.

NASCAR winners celebrate by drinking whatever the sponsor is selling. If it’s Pepsi or Coke, it’s almost okay. If it’s motor oil- that’s okay too. In the garages, the losers are drinking stuff that would make their cars really fly except that it’s, one, it’s illegal, and, two, would burn their valves out before the first turn. The winner gets doused with the stuff whne he shows up and set on fire. That’s the part you don’t get to see on tv.

In figure skating- there’s a laugh- the winner skates out to mid-rink and lift’s her tutu to show a cosmetic covered skeleton. The audience applauds but only to be polite.

In golf, sinking a 45-foot putt will show the golfer crack a huge smile and pumps his fist in the air. The gallery gets so worked up they start to whisper.

Note that in none of these other sports is celebrating a cause for a penalty. Only the NFL does that. You know what they are? A bunch of sissies, that’s what. If a fight did break out, what’s the harm? They are so padded, and wearing helmets to boot, that no one could possibly get hurt except the referees, if they are stupid enough to interfere. No, the NFL is for sissies.