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Toronto Blue Jays pitcher David Price celebrates with teammates after they clinched the American League East following their double-header against the Baltimore Orioles.Patrick Semansky/The Associated Press

Imagine for a moment walking through a car wash, fully dressed.

Multiply that by, say, 10, and you get a pretty good sense of what transpired in the Toronto Blue Jays clubhouse on an unforgettable Wednesday night.

Unforgettable certainly to members of the media, mostly draped in plastic outer wear to fend off the cascading torrents of champagne and beer that was being indiscriminately sprayed about the premises.

Who knows what the players might recall in the aftermath of a wild celebration that transpired, commemorating the end of a 22-year playoff dry spell by Major League Baseball's only Canadian franchise.

With a typically demonstrative 15-2 victory over the Baltimore Orioles in the first game of a doubleheader here at Camden Yards, the Blue Jays clinched first place in the American League East for the first time since 1993.

With a second game still to be played, the celebration had to be delayed for several hours – and the anticipation obviously fuelled the magnitude of the festivity.

And the debauchery was delightful with multi-million dollar athletes behaving like high-school students with their parents out of town for a long weekend.

Entering the Blue Jays locker room the first thing you noticed was that it was as secure as a hazmat suit, with heavy duty plastic sheeting draped over each locker to protect the integrity of the Armani suits.

The clubhouse resembled a downtown Toronto city street during recycling pickup, with four huge plastic bins filled to the brim with bottles of beer and champagne, only the bottles were full.

"This is something else," said a rather damp R. A. Dickey, the Toronto pitcher who had the misfortune of starting the second game of the doubleheader in front of what amounted to a Triple-A Toronto lineup.

Toronto wound up losing 8-1, but it obviously didn't matter.

"I don't know how other people celebrate, but when you celebrate like a family like this it's something special," Dickey said.

The players were all wearing T-shirts that proclaimed "The East Is Ours" and the room was rank with the smell of good cigars and spilled alcoholic beverages.

Kevin Pillar, who played a killer centrefield for the Blue Jays all season, was outfitted in a luxurious blue robe that pitcher David Price has purchased earlier for all his teammates.

As the rap music blared Pillar – with a lit cigar in one hand and a half-consumed can of beer in the other – twirled himself about the clubhouse, eyes nearly closed, in a dance not witnessed since David Lynch filmed Twin Peaks.

And of course the banter amongst the players was something else.

Consider this exchange between Jose Bautista, who cranked his 40th home run of the season in the clinching game and was trying to conduct an interview amid all the madness, when Josh Donaldson, Toronto's most-valuable-player candidate, ambled by.

"Hey, congratulations on getting to 40 today," Donaldson bellowed above the din. "This guy's the man," Donaldson continued, referencing Bautista, hugging him tighter than a Gregg Zaun vest. "This guy's the man right here."

"No, you're the man," Bautista shot back.

"This is the man," Donaldson continued, unheeded.

"You're the man," Bautista said, again.

"It's been a long time coming," Bautista said, after Donaldson had wobbled off. "The city hasn't had the best of luck with any of the professional sports and we're the first one to kind of – well not the first one, the second. The Raptors made it to the playoffs last year.

"Hopefully we'll get to go a little deeper."

Toronto manager John Gibbons, whose head has been on the firing line more than once during two stints as the Blue Jays manager, was savouring all the goings-on with his typical world-weary eye.

"I heard about it," Gibbons mused, when the topic of the 22-year playoff drought was broached.

He agreed it has been a long and somewhat dusty trail he has negotiated as the Blue Jays manager "But it's been a good trail, it's been a fun trail," Gibbons said. "You get into these jobs, you get an opportunity for these jobs. This is what you want. If you don't get to this point you don't hang around long.

"I was fortunate to get two shots here. So it all came together really this year."

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