Hooters girls, Woody from "Toy Story," lions, disco dancers, exotic dancers and old maids. These are just a few of the costumes you may find while looking for your Halloween getup.

However, I am not talking about a day of dress up that falls on the last day of October. I am talking about the rite of passage that each and every Major League Baseball rookie, or player with less than one year of total service time, must endure.

Come September, you see, a wonderful thing happens in baseball: baseball expands its rosters, giving some deserving players a cup of coffee in the big leagues. These players come from all sorts of backgrounds, most of whom, I would venture to say are on the young side. These kids are often the studs, the creams of the crop, in the minor leagues. They have, already had a ton of success at the minor-league level.

Now they get to put on the major league uniform and get a crash course in being a big leaguer. This is an invaluable experience for these players.

Baseball, in itself, is a very humbling game. As a hitter, if you're successful 30 percent of the time, you're an all-star. If you happen to hit the ball really far 30 times in 600 at bats, you're a superstar. But you also deal with a lot of failure, so being humble while being self-confident is a huge part of your success.

As a major league baseball player, you're also in a close-knit fraternity, one of approximately 750 people in the world. It's a select group, and from a numbers perspective, it's easier to be a doctor or a lawyer.

Within this fraternity we are charged with self-policing ourselves. Baseball does this better than any of the major sports. (To tell you the truth, the whole kicking people out of games because they hit each other with pitches creates more problems than it solves, but I'll save for anther day.)

Part of policing each other is this right of passage, and it usually takes place in New York, Chicago, L.A. or on the way home after a long road trip in September -- the date is only known by a select few within the hierarchy of the clubhouse ... though sometimes the date gets out when there is a player who is hesitant on going along with the ritual. (In this case he is told about it weeks in advance so as to build up the anxiety.)

The date finally comes, and many different variations of the same thing always happen. The rookies' clothes, shoes, suitcases are all taken and replaced with the costumes of choice by the Trevor Hoffmans, Jason Kendalls and Mike Camerons of the team. Like ninjas, the clubhouse attendants act swiftly when the game goes past the fifth inning so as to not give the rookies time to prepare for the fun to be had by the rest of us.

When the game is over, win or lose, fun is to be had. It's a long season and the boys of summer are just that: grown men still acting like boys. These rookies will have to dress like Pippi Longstocking or like a giant banana and they will have to do the song and dance while on the bus, and then the plane, and they most likely will have to address the media or sign autographs -- or my personal favorite -- walk the last 10 blocks to the hotel.

But this is more than just boys being boys. From this act you learn as a player to not take yourself too seriously.

You learn to be humble, and you gain self-confidence knowing you still fit in ... while looking absolutely ridiculous.

Happy Halloween, Milwaukee.