The Wave - Snap Classic

What if you invented something the whole world knows but someone else took the credit? This week on Snap, we uncover the story of Krazy George, a shy wood-shop teacher turned professional cheerleader, who sparked a phenomenon from the stands of the Oakland Coliseum. A huge thank you to the man, the myth, the legend… Krazy George Henderson http://www.krazygeorge.com/for sharing your story. At 80 years young, George is still banging his drum for the Spartans at his alma mater, San Jose State. He also just celebrated his 50th season cheering professionally for the San Jose Earthquakes of Major League Soccer. To read more about the life and times of George, check out his memoir “Still Krazy After All These Cheers” https://www.amazon.com/Krazy-George-Still-After-Cheers/dp/0692253157 Produced by Bo Walsh, edited by Anna Sussman, original score by Dirk Schwarzhoff, artwork by Teo Ducot. Season 17 - Episode 13 Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:08Glynn Washington?

  What do you get for the person who says, "Oh, I don't need anything"? Nothing? Okay, put a bow on that. Because Shop brings a whole bunch of stores together at shop.com. Cookware, cakes, toys, high-tech. Type in what you're looking for and search across stores at once. Find brands you love. Check out fast and track every order in one spot. Because somewhere in there is the thing that makes them go. That! That's what it is. That! And to celebrate the all-new shop.com, Shop is giving away $1 million in Shop Cash. That's Shop's rewards currency.

• 0:48Glynn Washington?

  1,000 shoppers are each going to win $1,000 in Shop Cash, just in time for the holidays. Get something for the people on your list. And yes, you're allowed to put your own name on there. Enter to win the $1 million Shop Cash giveaway from now until November 1st. Just go to shop.com. There are so many ways to win. That's shop.com. Shopping designed around you. No purchase necessary. Restrictions apply. Official rules available at shop.com.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  This show is supported by Odoo. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out Odoo at O-D-O-O dot com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.

• 1:51Glynn Washington?

  Okay, so it's time the world knew the truth. And I know I'm gonna get the angry letters, the furious reprisals. Please send any and all complaints to the Snap Judgment Complaint Department, joe rogan at joe rogan dot com. But I gotta tell my truth because back in the day, I moved from Michigan to the San Francisco Bay. Land in lovely Oakland, California, good people, good times. I instantly feel this sense of kinship, this sense of home, some of the same foods. And someone needs to explore the relationship between Michigan pasties and Bay Area Eponadas. Got the same pride of place.

• 2:35Glynn Washington?

  And I even hear similar slang in the Bay. Catch folk walking down the street saying, "That car is hella fast." "That girl dances hella wack." "My mom's is hella crazy." I just smile with pride, catching echoes of my former home in my new home. Imagine then, my surprise, my chagrin to learn that these Bay Area people have the gall and the audacity to say, "They invented the term hella." The Bay Area hip-hop, the skateboarders, the hyphy movement, all they claim, which is odd because I know who started this worldwide trend.

• 3:20Glynn Washington?

  We did. And by "we," I mean the good folk of East Kentwood High School, right outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan. "Hey, it's gonna be hella cold up north, Chad." "Kim, how a good party you missed." In fact, I wanna go out on a limb and say the specific person who started this phenomenon is a guy who sat behind me in Mr. Van de Mullen's geology class. A fellow by the name of Shawn Webb. That's right, no longer can I just sit silent while this giant of modern American English vernacular goes unheralded. I'm hella mad! And today on Snap, that's not all we're setting the record straight on.

• 4:07Glynn Washington?

  Snap uncovers the real story of a generation's long mystery. Snap Judgment proudly presents The Wave. My name is John Washington. It's a hella good show when you're listening to Snap Judgment.

• 4:40Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment, The Wave episode.

• 4:47Glynn Washington?

  Now, every high school superstar knows that the roar of the crowd has to fade eventually. But Snap producer Bo Walsh brings us a tale about one guy who left behind something that will live on forever. Our story begins right here in Oakland, California.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  In just a few hours, the A's are going to play their final game at the Oakland Coliseum. Thousands of fans expected to attend, showing their support for the team, a team they've loved for years, in fact, decades for some.

• 5:20Speaker 03

  This past fall, close to 47,000 people sold out the Coliseum to bid farewell to one of baseball's most storied franchises before the A's abandoned the city of Oakland.

• 5:39Speaker 03

  In their 56 seasons, the Oakland A's went from triumph to tragedy. A once dynasty which included four World Series titles, followed by years of fielding baseball's lowest payroll.

• 5:55Speaker 03

  The Oakland A's were more than just a baseball team, though. They were a symbol of Oakland, a source of pride that unified a city. And while the rundown Coliseum may have earned a reputation for its small crowds, sewage overflows, and even possum infestations.

• 6:17Speaker 03

  It was home to a loyal fanbase.

• 6:23Speaker 04

  It's a terrible day, but a great day.

• 6:28Speaker 03

  One of those fans was a man named Krazy George, who saw all of the ups and downs, and would create one of the team's most iconic and lasting legacies. He was asked by the A's to be at their last game, to see them off and share in this final memory.

• 6:45Speaker 04

  This is the best part of the game for me. I just have fun making people smile. Alright, thank you.

• 6:54Speaker 04

  Hey, I was there. How you doing? Well, I can tell you I was shy. Well, I'm still shy. I really am. If I'm out of my element and people don't know I'm Krazy George, and you see me across the room and nobody knows me, I am shy. I'm the quietest person in the room. And that's the way it's always been, but once I become Krazy George, I changed my persona and I'm not shy anymore.

• 7:30Speaker 03

  As a young kid, George was not crazy. His voice was not always gravelled by a strange line of work, and his name wasn't even George.

• 7:40Speaker 04

  All through high school, I was called Mike, because my middle name is George Michael. And my dad was named George, so I went by Mike. So all my friends through high school, through junior college, called me Mike. And it's quite a difference between Krazy George and Mike. I mean, they're the world of difference. Mike was quiet. At high school, I don't think I ever talked to a girl. I never went to a dance. I probably didn't know a girl's name in high school, except if it was one of my best friend's sisters. I mean, I didn't have a date till I was 21 years old. I had like four, three or four intimate friends in high school, and I still keep in touch with two of them.

• 8:25Speaker 04

  And they really are amazed that I transformed myself like this. Almost everybody didn't expect it. And then they go, "Now you're Krazy George."

• 8:38Speaker 04

  George, can I get a photo with you? Why, sure. Oh, friggin' honor, man. You're a legend.

• 8:44Speaker 04

  Thank you, Silver. Alright.

• 8:46Speaker 03

  It was in college, as a student at San Jose State, that one day, something was unlocked. Something deep inside that George never knew he had.

• 9:01Speaker 04

  Don Bogdan, my best friend back then, one day, he said, "Let's go to a football game."

• 9:08Speaker 04

  And I said, "Sure, I'd love to go." And we went. And he brought a drum and a bugle. What do I do with a bugle? A bugle takes talent to play. I couldn't play the bugle, so he hands me the drum. Well, anybody can play a drum. And I started hitting it.

• 9:27Speaker 04

  Hey, Spoons, let's get behind it! This is gonna be a great game! And I was having fun. And I was getting a few people cheering with me. And by the first half, I had like forty people cheering in that section. Is everybody ready? San Jose, is everybody ready?

• 9:49Speaker 04

  By the third quarter, I had the whole section cheering. And they're all laughing and enjoying it. And we stood out.

• 9:59Speaker 03

  George kept showing up to the Spartan football games. And soon with that drum in his hand, he wasn't so shy anymore.

• 10:07Speaker 04

  When I'd hit the drum, like, three times in a row, I would look up in the stands, and five thousand people would be looking at me. That's what the drum did. I got their attention. Get up, everybody! I adopted the idea that I liked being noticed. I've always wanted to be an extrovert, I guess. And that gave me the perfect excuse. So I started using my personality, carrying the drum. I get up close and personal in the stands with the fans, and that's why they cheer for me. I'm with them.

• 10:50Speaker 04

  I found out the impact I made on the fans. I can change the face of a game.

• 10:59Speaker 03

  George became a fixture at San Jose State games and a bit of a local celebrity. But cheerleading wasn't gonna pay his bills.

• 11:08Speaker 04

  I needed a job. A job comes along at Buxer High School. So now I was a regular, full-blown teacher. And I tell you, that was not my forte, but I was teaching. I don't know if they knew I wasn't cut out to be a teacher or not, but I wasn't getting a lot of joy out of it.

• 11:34Speaker 03

  At school, he could never seem to find that same control over the classroom that Krazy George had over the crowd.

• 11:41Speaker 04

  The image of who I am, and then I have to be a strict teacher, and I was a terrible disciplinarian. So he's like right below, out of control. That's, that's the way I felt. It was chaos in the class. The kids just went nuts. And I'd lose control almost. I had nightmares about teaching sometimes. I was just not born for that. And I was born for cheerleading.

• 12:13Speaker 05

  This might be the real George Henderson, alias Krazy George. Cheerleader, have tambourine, will travel from the SEALs to the earthquakes to the San Jose State Spartans. The fans not only love his act, they obey his crazy demands.

• 12:29Speaker 03

  George was moonlighting on the weekends as a local cheerleader when he started getting calls from bigger teams.

• 12:37Speaker 04

  And that's when there was an indication I might be able to make some money at cheerleading. And I go, well, I'm gonna have to gamble. I'll try it. I just went in and I said, you know, I'm quitting teaching. I'm gonna resign my post. And I started cheering. And then I became professional.

• 13:01Speaker 04

  Krazy George and this is what I do.

• 13:03Speaker 03

  Now Krazy George was traveling all over the country banging his drum at games.

• 13:11Speaker 04

  It was a dream. I was having more fun than anybody. They pay me to do what I was doing for seven years for nothing. And having fun with it then. And they start paying me. And they started paying me more and more. Way more than I would ever make teaching. And I'm just loving it. So I was happy. But between the uniqueness of my occupation. Being so unique that nobody else I think in the world's ever done it. My persona, my personality. Fit. This is Krazy George, Mr. Insanity.

• 13:51Speaker 04

  His ability to instigate fans has captured the imagination of spectators and sports teams alike.

• 13:59Speaker 03

  Back up for the Rockies, the center ice, a quick pass. Give it to him! One night shortly after going pro. George got a gig working a hockey game for the Colorado Rockies of the NHL. Who desperately needed his help to get the crowd into the game.

• 14:16Speaker 04

  That night, it was a smaller crowd. They hardly ever do more than 7,000 a game. They were just a struggling franchise in the NHL. And, you know, of course, we were probably being beat.

• 14:29Speaker 03

  So he wanted to start a cheer with three sections of fans to try to wake up the sleepy building.

• 14:35Speaker 04

  And so there was three sections that had a lot of people in it. So I took these three sections. And I said, okay, I want to start here and I want you to stand up and sit down as I point to you. And I said, I want everybody to just yell, go. This section starts, I just want you to stand and yell, go, go, go.

• 14:56Speaker 03

  When George felt it was time to rally the crowd, he pointed to the section he wanted to stand first.

• 15:02Speaker 04

  Are you ready? Up! Physically, I had the whole section stand up. And as they stand up, they hear "Go!" And then the next section stands up and hears "Go!" And I started it. And now it got, the bout was on a curve.

• 15:19Speaker 03

  Suddenly, as the fans followed George's lead, it was contagious. Butts started to rise up out of the seats. The sections next to them saw what they did and did the same.

• 15:32Speaker 04

  I didn't have to talk to the next section all at once when I went, "Go, go, go." I stopped. But the next section stood up and he'll go. And they would just throw up their arms. And it kept going. And it got bigger and louder as it went, "It's going now." And I went, "All right. This is good."

• 15:53Speaker 03

  The sections of fans standing up to cheer and sitting down one section at a time in sequence sort of looked like waves in the ocean.

• 16:02Speaker 04

  That cheer, after it died or stopped, the place went nuts. Because they'd never seen anything like it. Neither did I. I was happy too. I knew right then, I knew, "That's a cheer I would keep doing." I knew that. So I had that new cheer in my arsenal.

• 16:21Speaker 03

  Krazy George started what everyone would soon be calling "The Wave."

• 16:33Glynn Washington?

  And Snap returns. George's new little cheer looks high with a few thousand fans. But how about a sold-out stadium? Stay tuned.

• 17:01Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the Wave episode. And last we left, professional cheerleader Krazy George started a never-before-seen cheer at an empty hockey game that sparked a crowd reaction unlike anything he expected. But, can George pull it off in primetime? Snap Judgment.

• 17:26Speaker 03

  Krazy George debuted the Wave in Colorado and would break it out at smaller events like high school rallies, but he never showcased it in a big stadium.

• 17:36Speaker 04

  And that's when the time came to go to the Oakland A's game. Of course, when it came to cheering, no one could ignore the A's 10th man, Crazy George Henderson.

• 17:46Speaker 03

  During the 1981 season, the Oakland A's hired George to come cheer for 25 of their biggest home games.

• 17:53Speaker 04

  They've only done one Major League Baseball team, and that's the Oakland A's.

• 17:58Speaker 03

  The swinging A's dominated baseball in the 70s, winning three straight World Series titles. Oakland has won the 1972 World Series!

• 18:10Speaker 06

  The Oakland A's have won their second consecutive World Series championship. And the A's have done it! The championship are the Oakland A's!

• 18:20Speaker 03

  But as the 80s approached, they hit a post-dynasty slump, and the once-proud A's were now a last-place team, with rumors spreading that they might leave Oakland. When new owner Walter Haas bought the team in 1981, he knew of Krazy George and his reputation for stirring up Bay Area crowds, and thought he could help revitalize the atmosphere at the Oakland Coliseum.

• 18:45Speaker 04

  I showed up, and after I did one game, they just loved it.

• 18:54Speaker 04

  I'd do a cheer, then I'd run up the row. I'd run to the next thing. And ten, twenty seconds, thirty seconds, I'm in the next section, ready to do a cheer. Back and forth cheers, four-corner cheers, clapping, you name it. Krazy George.

• 19:07Speaker 07

  Krazy George Henderson gets them all going, and it's amazing.

• 19:13Speaker 04

  Think he's not pumped up? When I would walk in, I could take the fans and get ten times more reaction than they ever saw before. And the owners and the general manager, everybody, players, loved it. It was game-changing.

• 19:31Speaker 03

  The A's win the win. George controlled the crowds in Oakland as if he'd been there for years. And during that 1981 season, the A's returned to their winning ways, finishing with the best record in the American League. So on October 15th, in a sold-out, nationally televised playoff game against the rival New York Yankees, with 47,000 fans in attendance, Krazy George felt it might be time to introduce the Wave to the world.

• 20:05Speaker 04

  I knew, at the start, I knew I wanted maybe to try the Wave. But I just didn't know if I could do it. But when I walked into that stadium, we're playing the Yankees, such rivalry, and it's just, we wanted to beat them so bad, and we'd already lost two games away. So we had to win, or we're out of the playoffs. So I thought that Wave, it was needed, and I knew what it could do, the energy it could add to a stadium. But I'd only been doing it for like, six months or a year before that, in little venues.

• 20:48Speaker 04

  But I said, if I pull it off here, this could be big. It is 72 degrees here in Oakland, a good crowd on hand. And in the background, I hear, I'm sure you hear, the Oakland...

• 21:00Speaker 06

  Fans reacting to their Oakland A's. They love them here. The Yankees want to nail it down tonight and go on to World Series, but the Oakland A's say not just yet.

• 21:09Speaker 04

  That was an important game, big important game. And it was a nationally televised game. I wanted to win that game.

• 21:19Speaker 06

  The Coliseum in Oakland, the game is scoreless. Numerous threats by each team. Nobody's been able to push one across the plate.

• 21:26Speaker 04

  So the game starts and we just are not scoring. It's a low scoring game. It's depressing. And I go, well, I've got to pull this off because I have a feeling it really could do something.

• 21:41Speaker 04

  So I'm going, I'm gonna try it. Now remember, nobody had ever seen it before. And so I went into this one section and I said, this is the time. It's about the third inning.

• 21:55Speaker 04

  I could feel that atmosphere going down at inevitable, we're gonna get eliminated, the Yankees. So I get the three sections. I wanted three sections to talk to.

• 22:08Speaker 04

  And I talked to the three sections and I told them what I wanted. And I said, first you guys stand up, you sit out, then you're gonna stand up and you sit down. But I screamed and I was mean.

• 22:18Speaker 06

  These fans are really enthusiastic. And I'll tell you, the way it's been going, it's like it's been boiling and bubbling, a Mouse and Helen feeling here where something's going to erupt.

• 22:29Speaker 04

  And then I knew that when we start this, the fourth and fifth section down, they probably could hear me easily yelling at them. And I started with these three sections. And the energy that's just then was great and they were having so much fun doing it. And then it went about seven sections. The three were great, the next one was pretty great, and then it do, do, do, da, and it just

• 22:56Speaker 04

  died. Because everybody's watching the game. And boy, on cue, when that died, everybody booed. And everybody's looking over what's going on.

• 23:11Speaker 06

  One of the most amazing sights, Joe, as we look at the mezzanine. Each section, as they said, goal got up all the way to behind home plate. Completely around the stadium through the bleachers. Looked like it was orchestrated.

• 23:23Speaker 04

  I do it a second time. And it starts off, and now it's like eight, nine sections, really strong. Gets behind home plate.

• 23:32Speaker 06

  Well, here we go again. Ralph Yolton, Ellen D. Mezzanine section. Okay, now we'll try to count them, watch.

• 23:41Speaker 04

  And it starts to die, and it died. And I'm screaming, I'm yelling, "You keep it going!" They said, "Okay, George, we got it."

• 23:50Speaker 06

  Man, you just saw in the picture, the man who orchestrates that. Well, you gotta believe it, that's George. That's all I know, George and Krazy George.

• 24:01Speaker 04

  Now, one-third of the stadium has done it. At that point, I think everybody knew what I wanted.

• 24:09Speaker 05

  Under the direction of Krazy George out here, having themselves a good, good evening and enjoying baseball, enjoying the Coliseum and not hurting anybody.

• 24:18Speaker 06

  And this guy really works it. I mean, such power he has, he just directs section by section, and you see it. It's a marvelous thing.

• 24:26Speaker 04

  The third time, this was it. I started it.

• 24:31Speaker 06

  Down below, they're all going bumpers. He really loves it. Look at him, he's got them all going.

• 24:37Speaker 04

  I turned around and I'm watching it, and all three decks are doing it. In unison, all three sweeps all the way around, comes back through the outfield, and comes to where we are. And the place went nuts.

• 24:55Speaker 06

  The chunnel rising here.

• 24:58Speaker 04

  Now, every deck is doing it, and they're screaming as it's coming by. And it's like the most intense thing you ever saw. Sounded like a locomotive, it really did. And I mean, they're coming towards a massive locomotive, the noise level. And it just picks up, and so you can visually shut your eyes and listen and know where the wave was in the stadium. Just hear it, and you can hear it on the outfield, you can hear coming around, and it just rips by it, and it kept going, and they loved it.

• 25:29Speaker 05

  And in the background, you can hear the organized cheering.

• 25:34Speaker 06

  Well, they've got a new gimmick here. They start in section. They raise up, throw their arms on the air, and you all go. And just as they start to sit down, the next section gets up, and they go all the way around the ballpark doing it. And it's quite a sight.

• 25:53Speaker 04

  It impressed me even. I was unbelievably happy watching it go because I had no idea if I could get 47,000 fans to do it. It was the biggest crowd I'd ever worked with. Once it got going, oh, boy, I just felt it. You know, I'd just sit there watching it, and I'm just taking it in. It was really a nice feeling. In the back of my mind, I was hoping they would have it filmed. It's never been on video.

• 26:31Speaker 04

  The game was excruciating towards the end. I mean, the fans were just so loyal, and they were cheering and yelling and supporting the A's. At the end of the game, it would sound like we were winning the game, and we were behind. And it was tough, a tough loss. But the joy after the game, the fans' reaction to me, they were coming up to me and going, "What was that? We loved it." People had never seen it before, and I didn't know it at that time I debuted it to the world because I didn't know it was going to go around the world. Okay, okay, stand up! Woo! You've got it, keep it going, keep it going! That's a A, that's a beautiful A! It's going on the other side!

• 27:14Speaker 03

  After showcasing the wave to a national audience, Krazy George started using it regularly at games as his signature cheer.

• 27:23Speaker 06

  I like when he has the A's wave going around.

• 27:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's the best. That cheer was the staple of me hitting the pinnacle of power. That is when I know I've got the stadium in the palm of my hand.

• 27:40Speaker 03

  The big debut of the wave instantly led to more jobs and bigger contracts for Krazy George. And his celebrity status grew. At first, it seemed like his golden ticket.

• 27:52Speaker 05

  His name is George Henderson, although to most sports fans around North America, he is best known as Krazy George.

• 27:58Speaker 07

  Yes, he has fun, but when you take a look at his annual income, you realize that this man is not crazy at all.

• 28:06Speaker 03

  But not long after George unveiled it at the A's game, the unthinkable happened. George was questioned by a reporter in Canada about whether or not he was actually the original creator of the cheer.

• 28:20Speaker 04

  I never heard of it, never thought of it. When I heard a team was trying to challenge me inventing the wave.

• 28:27Speaker 03

  The reporter told George that the University of Washington was claiming that they were in fact the founders of the wave. After fans did it at a football game right around the same time George pulled it off in Oakland.

• 28:40Speaker 04

  And so he told me that they were taking credit for it. And they were claiming they did it on the 31st, two weeks after I did it. And after it was nationally televised during the game. I did October 15th, they did it on October 31st. So two weeks later, they did it. But I didn't hear they were claiming it. That's when I called up the University of Washington to find out. It was really, I got mad and I wanted to correct it. And I figured it'd be really easy. I'd call them up and I called the University of Washington, their athletic department.

• 29:23Speaker 04

  And I talked into the guy. And I said, "When did you start this?" And they gave me the date and all that. And I'm going, "No, I invented it." I say, "I know I invented it." And it took a long process. And I invented it on October 15th. I have a video. He says, "No." I said, "Well, I did it two weeks before you," and we get this argument.

• 29:47Speaker 03

  George reached out to newspapers, radio shows, anybody that would listen, but the claims kept coming in.

• 29:55Speaker 04

  Sports Illustrated, you know, they're supposed to be like the premier great experts on sports. So somebody in Sports Illustrated did some little article on it and gave Washington credit. And then I heard somebody on Monday Night Football say that Seattle created the wave.

• 30:18Speaker 04

  I couldn't believe it.

• 30:19Speaker 03

  The story of the birth of the wave was getting retold across the country and now had a life of its own. That is the originator of the wave.

• 30:31Speaker 06

  So he claims, so he claims, right? That is greatly debated.

• 30:36Speaker 04

  We're doing the wave! We're doing the wave! Are you ready?

• 30:41Speaker 03

  Even though his claim to fame as the inventor was being questioned, crazy George kept leading the wave, and it kept spreading.

• 30:51Speaker 04

  I did it at the Olympics here in eighty-four. And then Mexico saw it, took it down there, started doing all their venues. Then the World Cup comes along. And in every game in the World Cup, all the Mexicans did the wave.

• 31:07Speaker 06

  And the Estrecha Stadium is a mess of flags and jubilant faces.

• 31:14Speaker 04

  Now it's televised around the world. So now the whole world sees the wave for the first time.

• 31:23Speaker 04

  And everybody calls it the Mexican Wave. Well, I could fight the University of Washington, but I can't fight Mexico. I'm undergunned, so I said, "I just like to laugh about it." But everybody calls it outside of this country. It's the Mexican Wave. They invented it.

• 31:41Speaker 06

  As they get the wave moving around here, boy, they've got a full house. They can get it rocking.

• 31:46Speaker 04

  When it finally became like a standard of the world, I mean, I think every sport, every team that's professional, no matter what it is, probably did a wave at their stadium. And it's just started around the world.

• 32:04Speaker 04

  He invented the wave. I invented it. He invented it. How old were you in 1981? That's what I thought. The guy that invented the paperclip.

• 32:16Speaker 04

  He invented that. It's a little thing.

• 32:20Speaker 04

  But he's walking around, he's going by some office and somebody is slipping that paperclip onto a five pages of something. He gets something out of that, he gets an enjoyment that he invented that. And they're using it. And they're happier for it, it's better than having five sheets of paper flying all over the room and you can't figure out what order they're in. And that's what I get, when I see that wave going anywhere. I just, I feel great about it. It is really my claim to fame.

• 33:00Speaker 04

  Let me see it again.

• 33:04Speaker 04

  That's the highlight film.

• 33:15Speaker 03

  Throughout the 43-year debate over who invented the wave, the Oakland A's always stood by George.

• 33:23Speaker 04

  The A's were great and when they heard about the controversy, kept backing me. I'm part of the Oakland A's. I'm supporting you guys, I'm part of you. And I'm showing you how much we love you by interconnecting with all the other fans to show the support.

• 33:43Speaker 03

  So last September, for the A's final game in Oakland, the last in the Coliseum, the send-off for the whole city saying goodbye to its baseball team. Former President Andy Dolech reached out to George personally and asked him to be a guest of the A's. Perhaps the most popular A's fan of them all. The Coliseum is where crazy George.

• 34:07Speaker 04

  Invented the wave during the 1981 playoffs, so he had to be here today. It's a happy sad day. Oh my gosh, I cannot believe it. The last A's game, I said, well, I'll bring my drum, but I don't know what I'll do.

• 34:24Speaker 04

  And you know, and then I pull into the parking lot.

• 34:29Speaker 04

  My drum's there, I get my drum out of the bag.

• 34:33Speaker 04

  And we're sitting in the middle of the parking lot, and within like 10 seconds, there's 15 people around me. And I'm looking around and they're just going crazy, crazy, George. And it's so sad and they're so unhappy, but they're all want to support the A's, the team itself. The A's are the greatest baseball team in the world. The Y's, I hope you're back. Go A's. You invented the wave. I cried there.

• 35:04Speaker 04

  I started doing little cheers.

• 35:13Speaker 04

  I pounded my drum and the place just all looked up and I'm screaming, yelling, they're screaming, yelling back. And it's getting more and more fun.

• 35:25Speaker 03

  And then for one last time, Krazy George led the wave in the place he introduced it to the world.

• 35:35Speaker 04

  When I'm gone, they will be talking about the wave. And so it means a lot to me.

• 36:03Glynn Washington?

  A huge Snap Judgment thank you to the man, the myth, the legend, Krazy George Henderson for sharing your story with the Snap. At 80 years young, George is still banging the drum at his alma mater, San Jose State, for the Spartans, and George just celebrated his 50th season cheering professionally for the San Jose earthquakes of Major League Soccer. To read more about the life and times of George, check out his memoir, Still Krazy: After All These Cheers. You can find a link to the book, as well as all things social media for Crazy George, at snapjudgment.org. This piece was edited by Anna Sussman. The original score is by Dirk Swartzoff.

• 36:46Glynn Washington?

  It's produced by Bo Walsh.

• 36:58Glynn Washington?

  Now, if you missed even a moment, know that an entire world of Snap storytelling awakes. Snap's Interspecies Communication Series, Tooth and Claw, is on podcast platforms everywhere right now. Eat it up! KQD in San Francisco is our real field of dreams. Snap is brought to you by the team that really loves sports ball, set of course for the uber producer, Mr. Mark Ristich. Because growing up, the kids never let him play any Rainier games. No Snap Studios content may be used for training, testing, or developing machine learning or AI systems without prior written permission on Team Snap. The union represented producers, artists, editors, and engineers are members of the

• 37:41Glynn Washington?

  National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO Local 51. There's Nancy Lopez, Pat McSey Miller, Anna Sussman, Menzel Gorio, John Facio, Shayna Shealy, Taylor Decot, Flo Wiley, Bo Walsh, Marissa Dodge. My name is from Washington, and this is not the news. No way it's the news. In fact, you could step up to the plate in your first Major League game, take a swing, hit the ball, watch the ball land in the green, have no one catch it, and still have the umpire just decide to call you out because of some lunacy called the infield fly rule.

• 38:26Glynn Washington?

  And you would still not be as far away from the news as this is, but this is PRX.