AUDIENCES NUTS FOR ‘KRAZY GEORGE’
SAN JOSE » Count on Krazy George to put the “nut” in “The Nutcracker.”
The drum-pounding professional madman will make an appearance in the classic Christmas ballet this Saturday and Sunday. He’ll play the role of “Mother Ginger” with the Santa Cruz City Ballet. (Somewhere, Tchaikovsky is doing The Wave in his grave.)
Just how graceful are Krazy George’s arabesque penchées and grand jetés? “Baryshnikov has no worries about me,”
he acknowledged.
This marks the second year in a row that Krazy George (real name: George Henderson) has performed in The Nutcracker. He is best known for his antics at sports venues, most notably for A’s and San Jose Earthquakes. But he also continues to be a staple at local parades, San Jose State events and corporate gigs.
The Nutcracker is an unusual endeavor, even by Krazy George standards. Think of it as Christmas cheer.
“Oh, it’s fun. I have more fun than anybody,” he said during an interview at the Hyatt in Burlingame. “That’s what’s fun
about my job. They actually pay me to have fun.”
Krazy George describes himself as the world’s only full-time professional cheerleader. It’s a career that signaled from the start that it would not die easily. Before the first ever San Jose Earthquakes game in 1974, an ambulance roared onto the field with its sirens blaring.
The emergency vehicle pulled to a stop in front of the Earthquakes’ bench as anxious fans squirmed in their seats. Attendants hopped out, walked to the back and pulled out a gurney.
With a dramatic flair, they pulled off a blanket to reveal to the crowd … a lunatic clutching the game ball.
That’s how Krazy George made his entrance.
That was back on May 11, 1974, and, to steal from his book title, he’s “Still Krazy After All These Cheers,” Krazy George just keeps coming back from beyond. Like his signature Wave, he’s had his ups and downs over the years, but he’s still insanely popular wherever he goes.
There’s no official listing of George’s age, but it’s somewhere in the 73 range. Shouldn’t he be retired by now?
Not till the cheers subside, he said.
“Because I really never failed,” George said. “If I had one game where we went in and couldn’t get people going absolutely nuts, I’d never show up at another game because it would kill me.”
George, a former shop teacher at Buchser High School in Santa Clara, considers his time with the mid-1970s Earthquakes his big breakthrough as a professional cheerleader. “That was Camelot,” he said.
His ambulance routine at the Earthquakes opener gave way to a tradition of zany entrances at home games.
As he writes in his book, he wound up arriving with the game ball in a hot air balloon, a dump truck, a Ferrari, a cherry-picker, a chariot pulled by an ostrich and a camel. For a game against Vancouver, he showed up dressed like a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
But it was a few miles up the road where he landed his biggest claim to fame. The first recorded Wave took place at the Oakland Coliseum, during an A’s-Yankees playoff game, on Oct. 15, 1981.
There’s television footage to prove it — even if it’s a little shaky. TV crews didn’t yet understand how to catch The Wave in action. It was the first time they’d dealt with rolling groups of spectators standing, raising their arms in unison and sitting down again.
“When you review the video of that game, it’s so funny because they’re panning the audience and they capture people right on the side as they’re sitting down,” Krazy George said. “You never really see it the first time they tried to film it.
“I did it three times that game — the second and third time they figured it out so they could catch it.”
People caught it all right. The Wave eventually spread into about every stadium, park and arena across the globe, as an ESPN.com
story detailed extensively in 2013. That story took note that Prince William, the Duchess of Cambridge and British Prime Minister David Cameron had recently been caught doing The Wave at the velodrome during the Olympics in London.
Krazy George is quick to note that the landmark Wave at the A’s game in ’81 was the first recorded occasion, but he’d been tinkering with variations for years. As early as about 1970, he was leading student body cheers at Spartan Stadium by asking one section to yell “San” while another section countered with “Jose” and yet another with “State.”
That was the first ripple of The Wave.
He explains the entire back story — and the ensuing controversies — in his 2014 book, “Still Krazy,” written with his wife, Patricia Timberg.
Although he joked that the co-authors had an unusual arrangement.
“Here’s a fact: Every word in that book under four letters, I wrote,” George said. “Every word over four letters, she wrote.”
So ever “and” and “the” belonged to him?
“I’m big on those! I can spell those!” George replied.
The Wave as it approaches old age, can induce more groans and cheers these days. Modern fans roll their eyes (not their hands) whenever some half-hearted attempt ripples through a stadium.
There can be outright boos. To some, it’s a tired act.
Krazy George understands the problem. He knows just how badly The Wave can go without his supervision.
“Oh, yeah. Most of the time it’s the wrong time,” he explained. “You want to do it after a big play. Or if (your team) scores one run, and the bases are still loaded. You want to come back with a Wave right in there because people are going nuts. There’s energy and you start The Wave and you build the energy up even more.”
In general, he gets to games three hours early so he can mingle with fans, and friends say he never fails to draw a crowd (or stop for a selfie). Krazy George then opens games with his Earthquakes cheer, then roams the sections to elicit more noise.
He even signs his e-mails, “Cheers, George.”
In “The Nutcraker,” his role is to roll — he’ll be wheeled out on stage on a 10-foot high platform. Once there, a bunch of little kids, the Gingersnaps, will scurry out from under is large skirt. When Krazy George played this part a year ago, he took the liberty of also banging a drum. And the crowd went wild. “That’s the whole secret to my cheerleading,” Krazy George said. “I cheer like a fan wants to cheer. And I know. I sense when a cheer is right and ready to go.”
Contact Daniel Brown at 408-920-5354.