Jonny Gomes may have only batted .242 in his career, but he was an All-Star when it came to celebrating. The MLB journeyman won two World Series – in 2013 with the Red Sox and in 2015 with the Royals – and made the playoffs another handful of times.
Gomes’ first playoff appearance came in 2008 with the Tampa Bay Rays. He was drafted by Tampa Bay and spent 2003 to 2008 with the Rays. Gomes and the Rays hadn’t had much to celebrate up until that year, so he went all out.
Gomes joined the new Audacy Original Podcast “Baseball Isn’t Boring” to share a few stories about his celebrations, including the time he almost killed his teammates in 2008.
“We don’t even know how to celebrate, that team. Go back and look at that roster. You talk about young and dumb and not even knowing what the hell is going on,” Gomes said (13:40). “Sprinkle in a Carlos Pena, Cliff Floyd, Eric Hinske, that, you know, were babysitters.”
The 2008 Rays had a handful of players in their low-to-mid 20s on the roster, including Evan Longoria, B.J. Upton, Carl Crawford, Scott Kazmir, and David Price. They were all in the early stages of their careers.
“We clinched in Detroit and we’re wilin’ out, we are just wilin’ out, tornadoing the place, and I thought it’d be a great idea to take the fire extinguisher off the wall and blast the dudes in the shower with the fire extinguisher.”
Gomes thought it’d be an awesome idea, but you may already know where this is going.
“Sounds like a great idea. Everyone’s going to be all baby powdered up. So I take it into the shower and I blast it into the shower,” Gomes continued. “That wasn’t a very good idea.
“So it turns out that – my firefighter guys out there, they’re going to be like ‘duh’ – that powder or whatever it sucks oxygen out of the air to put the fire out. So I literally almost killed the team. Everyone came running out of the shower and they’re waving their arms and I’m just blasting them being like, ‘Yeah! This is so cool, right! Fire extinguisher joke!’ and then I thought we were going to need CPR on a couple of the guys.”
While fire extinguishers may look like fun to some, they’re anything but. Gomes and the Rays were lucky to continue celebrating and they danced all the way to the World Series where they lost to the Philadelphia Phillies in five games.
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