Wave could be harmful to your health
The 1980s distraction just won’t go away, despite the protests of hardcore fans
At first glance, you would think someone like April Whitzman would be a fan of the wave.
The 27-year-old is an enthusiastic and unreserved homer, who spent the slog that was the 2013 season serving as the Blue Jays’ professional cheerleader inside the MLB Fan Cave. Through it all she stayed positive and emerged as bright and chipper as ever. She even has fond childhood memories of the wave. As a kid she and her Dad would go on baseball road trips from their home in Campbellton, N.B., and nothing would make eight-year-old April happier than stuffing her face with cotton candy while wailing her arms in the air as the wave rolled through her section.
But now even she has had enough. The wave, Whitzman says, has jumped the shark.
“I believe there’s a time and a place for the wave, but it just seems to always happen at the most intense moments,” she says, sighing. “I find it incredibly distracting. You’re trying to watch the game and there’s some- body jumping up in front of you every few minutes.”
Anti-wave activists can list a litany of reasons why the practice should be banned. It’s a sign of amateurishness and bad fandom; it’s annoying for the people who want to watch the game and it may even distract the players.
Whitzman won’t name names, but she said that during her time in the MLB Fan Cave a handful of pros told her they couldn’t stand it. But the biggest beef is that those conducting the wave tend to choose a pivotal moment in the game to steal the spotlight. “Timing is everything,” Whitzman says. Sean Boulton, 45, is less forgiving. “Kill it with fire,” he said. “They’re missing the game as a result and causing other people to miss the game, too.”
The wave has been around for more than 30 years, but it’s hardly a hallowed tradition. The first recorded full-circle wave came during the 1981 ALCS in Oakland — a playoff game! — between the A’s and New York Yankees and was led by Krazy George Henderson, a freelance cheerleader who claims to have invented the choreographed undulation. Students at the University of Washington have also staked a claim as the originators, but the good mon- ey’s on Henderson.
Actions to stop the wave have been growing in baseball in recent years. Chuck Morgan, the Texas Rangers’ PA announcer, made a sly attempt in 2011 when he created a spoof health warning displayed on the video board during home games claiming that “surgeons have determined” doing the wave will cause tears in the supraspinatus and infraspinatus muscles “from the throwing of individual’s arms rapidly into the air.” Children caught doing the wave will be sold to the circus, the warning cautioned.
“Do not do the wave in the ballpark,” it concluded. “Doing the wave is safe at pro football games and Miley Cyrus concerts.”
In 2013 a group of Washington Nationals fans tried to “Kill the Wave” at Nats Park by appealing in an open letter to their fellow fans: “By doing ‘the wave’ you are: distracting the players, disrespecting the game, annoying many fans around you, insulting your team, violating baseball etiquette (and) looking like a doofus.”
Whitzman doesn’t want to be a killjoy. She says if there is a young kid in her row she’ll make an effort. But we aren’t teaching our children right if we encourage them to participate in the wave during an important part of the game, she says. Keep it to inning breaks and pitching changes and away from the big moments, with two outs and the tying run on. “It’s not that I want to destroy what could be a fun moment for fans, but the other side of that is there is a whole other group of passionate fans who are there to watch the game.”
Josh Murray, 33, leads a silent protest every time the wave rolls through his section at the Rogers Centre. He stays glued to his seat and hopes others follow suit. But he has had little success convincing others.
“I would be happy to never see the wave again,” he said. “But short of public shaming the people who are doing it, I’m not sure what to do.”