Short Stuff: The wAve

It’s a thrill to stand and, raise your arms, maybe give a woo! then sit down again, especially if you’re in a sports stadium. And especially if you’re doing it as part of a Wave. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 0:39Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry sitting in for Dave. Let's get started with the wave.

• 0:47Speaker 02

  I am glad you did this. I was kind of curious about the origins of the old wave.

• 0:52Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 0:53Speaker 02

  If you don't know what you mean, yeah. It's now kind of all over the world in various places, but it started out as

• 1:02Speaker 02

  an American thing that people would do in the stands at sports games where one bit at a time and all around the whole stadium, people would stand up and raise their arms up over their head. And if you look at it as it goes around the stadium, it looks like a wave is moving across the fans.

• 1:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because after they raised their arms over their heads, standing up, they would sit back down and the next section would do it and it would just move seamlessly when done correctly. For my money, it's one of the best things that could ever happen to you is to be in a really good wave. Oh my God, I find them so thrilling. I was really surprised to find that some people not only hate the wave, they're like, they denigrate people who like the wave or who do the wave.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:50Josh Clark?

  Don't get it. What do you think about the wave?

• 1:53Speaker 02

  Uh, I was afraid you were gonna ask me that.

• 1:55Josh Clark?

  I knew it.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  I'm not a waiver per se. Uh, I don't bemoan it. I'm not one of these people that's like, there's a game going on and blah, blah, blah. Nothing like that. I just, I got to a certain point where I like, I don't want to just stand up and throw my arms in the air and wave them like I just don't care.

• 2:14Speaker 02

  Sometimes if I'm in the right mood, and this is so lazy, I won't stand up, but I'll throw my arms up just to be, you know, kind of a good sport.

• 2:20Josh Clark?

  I've seen that, sure.

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Uh, and you know, now that, uh, Ruby is old enough to go to sporting events, I will of course do full wave participant. Because that's something like a kid would really enjoy. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna rain on her parade.

• 2:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And now that I think about it, I might like the wave so much because I haven't done it since I was a kid essentially, so.

• 2:42Speaker 02

  They didn't do it at the Wrigley Field. We went to our, the Cubs game together and I don't think there was a wave, was there?

• 2:47Josh Clark?

  No, they didn't. And Chuck, I was watching videos of waves today. They are a sorry shadow of their former self. If you want to see a good wave. I found a video called the wave at Michigan Stadium, 1984. That's a wave. The way that we used to do it in the eighties. So go check that video out and you'll be like, wow, that, that is, that's a pretty good wave.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  Wave Michigan Stadium, huh?

• 3:13Josh Clark?

  Yep, 1984. Don't forget that part. So as wholesome as I think the wave is, it turns out there's actually like a fair bit of controversy around it. Uh, specifically around who invented the wave. And what's mind boggling is there's two people who claim to have invented it. And they seem to have independently come up with it or debuted it within two weeks of one another. Isn't that nuts?

• 3:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty, it's a pretty crazy story and crazy being the key word here. Because crazy with a K, George Henderson is our first entrant into the wave, uh, invention sweepstakes. Because he was a San Jose, uh, Jose State cheerleader, uh, who graduated college, I guess. And this is in the 1970s and then was just sort of a freelance cheerleader for different pro teams. And, uh, was working in A's game on October 15th, 1981, a baseball game for the Oakland Athletics. Uh, playing the Yankees in Oakland and you can watch this on YouTube, footage from that game. Where crazy George, uh, has a drum and he gets fans to do.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  A version of the wave, in this version, though, it's sort of one section goes and then the next section goes, whereas a true wave is just a continuous sort of motion and sections be damned.

• 4:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's much more fluid, but there are a couple of points in that footage of that first wave in 1981 in October 15th, where they're going fast enough that it seems like they're, it does look like a wave for a second, but I get what you're saying. It's not what he was doing, right?

• 4:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. So it was a version, it was a proto-wave.

• 4:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it was a proto-wave, but Crazy George Henderson says, no, this was the wave. I've been working on this for years before that game in Oakland. He used to be a professional cheerleader at the Colorado Rockies NHL franchise games in Denver back in the late 70s. And he started coming up with the wave there, but there were so few people at those games, it didn't really amount to very much. And also, these games weren't very well covered, so he never got people to do the wave in any substantial way on camera. It wasn't until that Oakland A's game that he was able to document it on camera, posted it on the internet and was like, ipso facto, I created the wave.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  That's right. And if, stop your email now, if you're thinking Josh, Josh, the Colorado Rockies are a baseball team that weren't even around in the 70s, that was an NHL franchise first, and they would eventually become the New Jersey Devils.

• 5:52Josh Clark?

  I had it right.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  You had it right. The second entrant into the wave sweepstakes is a guy named Rob Weller. He's from Tacoma, Washington, and was, this is so great, he was known as the Yell King, AKA the greatest cheerleader in UW history.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  So he would go on to host Entertainment Tonight in the early 80s. So I was a big fan because I was a little 10 year old that loved Entertainment Tonight.

• 6:21Josh Clark?

  Do you remember him?

• 6:22Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:23Josh Clark?

  Oh, really? Okay, cool.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Oh dude, I watched Entertainment Tonight every night from I remember when it debuted. I was so excited.

• 6:30Josh Clark?

  That's really funny.

• 6:31Speaker 02

  Because it was like movie news and that's all I cared about.

• 6:33Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  But he called his and I'm surprised this didn't frankly, I'm surprised this didn't stick. He called it the expandable cheer.

• 6:42Josh Clark?

  Right. He had like the right idea at first. He was just going the wrong way. So he did the wave. He had people do the wave, but it was section by section and it would go from bottom to top.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:57Josh Clark?

  So at this one game on Halloween, 1981, two weeks after that Oakland A's game, he was having people do the expandable cheer. And at halftime, the band director, Bill Bissell, came over. He said, Hey, let me ask you something. Have you ever thought about taking that expandable wave and sending it outward rather than upward?

• 7:18Speaker 02

  You're expanding the wrong way.

• 7:20Josh Clark?

  Rob Weller picked his jaw off the ground.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:23Josh Clark?

  Hugged Bill Bissell tighter than he's ever hugged anybody else in his life and set about starting the wave.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  That's right. And maybe we should take a break here and talk about the fight that ensued right after this.

• 7:54Josh Clark?

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• 10:19Speaker 02

  Okay, so these two guys both lay claim to the wave. They have fought about it in a very childish manner over the years. I think it's fairly tongue-in-cheek. It's gotta be.

• 10:27Josh Clark?

  I don't know.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  You don't think so?

• 10:30Josh Clark?

  I don't know. It's possible, but it's also possible that it's not really all that tongue in cheek.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  Okay. Well, Bissell, the band director that you mentioned before, that expanded it outward with Weller's consent, says, well, first of all, that other wave, it's not a true oval. That was a baseball stadium. It's a diamond. And so that doesn't count. I throw water all over that argument because you could do a wave in a square room. You could do it in a, yeah, a literal square room, as long as you kept that motion constant.

• 11:04Josh Clark?

  Right. He also pointed out that-

• 11:06Speaker 02

  So poo poo on that.

• 11:06Josh Clark?

  Sure. His second point was that it was nothing more than a stand-up cheer, section by section, right?

• 11:13Speaker 02

  He's got a point there.

• 11:14Josh Clark?

  He definitely has a point there. He goes on to say, in the press, as far as I'm concerned, Crazy George can climb a pole and sit on it, which is an awful thing to say, because if you've ever seen the victims of Vlad the Impaler, that's not a pleasant way to go.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Oh, he meant him be impaled?

• 11:34Josh Clark?

  No, but he didn't think it through. He didn't think about the consequences. Bill Bissell didn't.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. By the mid 1980s, the wave had really caught on, though, no matter who invented it. Every stadium had their own version. It might have a special name. I believe Michigan that you talked about had what was called the Silent Wave.

• 11:53Josh Clark?

  That's creepy.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  Some places, they would jingle their car keys, stuff like that. Sometimes they got really creative and the waves would, would go around opposite each other and meet in the middle.

• 12:03Josh Clark?

  That's awesome.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  But this is about when people started saying, this thing is sort of disrupting my enjoyment of the game a little bit.

• 12:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Just real quick, can't you see somebody doing a jingling car keys wave, like stand up and they don't have any keys and they sit down and they're like, I really need to get a car?

• 12:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. Or the key fob just did the same.

• 12:24Josh Clark?

  Right. So what was this, 1984, that it really kind of spread in just a few years?

• 12:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:33Josh Clark?

  That was in America, in the United States, I should say. For the rest of the world, if you're talking about the wave, you might be listening and being like, I think I know what they're talking about. We don't call it the wave. We call it the Mexican wave. And that's true. The rest of the world outside of the United States calls the wave, the Mexican wave. And there's a really good reason why.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  That's right, because it started in Mexico.

• 12:57Josh Clark?

  That's right.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  Specifically- Or was spread internationally in Mexico, rather.

• 13:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so it started in the United States and it spread like a wave down to Mexico. And Mexico hosted the World Cup in 1986. And by this time, the people of Mexico had been doing the wave for years. And during a game, they did the wave and the world was just taken aback and fell in love with the wave. And still today, you can see football games, meaning soccer, where people are doing the wave. They love it, but they call it the Mexican wave.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  That's right. And if you're sitting at home thinking, guys, this is pretty good. I know a little history here, but I mean, you guys usually dig into the science of things. Surely there's been scientific studies about the wave, right?

• 13:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  Believe it or not, there have been. In 2002, there was some physicists from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences that built computer models analyzing lots and lots of waves at sporting events. They actually released this in Nature, the periodical nature, very respected. And NPR reported on it. And they had three key parameters that they kind of looked at, which was the distance between the, you know, sports goers, how many neighbors that an audience member, an audience member, that's a weird way to say somebody at a football game, but whatever. How many neighbors that you could see? And then the readiness or probability of an individual to start standing up, assuming others nearby are already standing. What in the world does that even mean?

• 14:24Josh Clark?

  It's saying whether the person involved is a grump or not. How many grumps do you have in the stands, essentially?

• 14:32Speaker 02

  Right. Interestingly, out of all this, I think the most interesting part is that they narrowed it down to like 20 or 30 people is all it takes to start a wave.

• 14:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah, not only that, they roll clockwise almost invariably. And they move at a speed of about 20 seats per second, these scientists figured out. But yeah, that is, that's not very many people to start a wave, especially if the crowd's in a good mood. And that's a really important point. If you start a wave at a critical moment in a game, you're going to get shouted at, even by people who like the wave, because that is the wrong time to do it. There's a time for the wave and there's a time for not the wave.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  I'm just trying to picture like, you know, bottom of the ninth, two outs, bases loaded, and guys like, "Come on, everybody!"

• 15:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah, let's give them a wave.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  It's like, yeah, you're not supposed to do it. Do it when it's a little boring and the crowd needs, you know, everyone's drinking a little bit, everyone's having a good time, maybe they're a little bored, maybe they're up seven to nothing in a baseball game at the home field. And so people are like, "Well, let's do something." That's a great time to start the wave. I've never started a wave. I've been a part of the saddest thing is when someone attempts to start the wave and it just doesn't happen.

• 15:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  It's a very shameful sit-down.

• 15:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it is. It's like being the one person to start the standing ovation and no one else liked the show as much as they did.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. The great comedian Gary Gullman talks about standing ovations and he's like, "You're gonna be standing in a minute to leave anyway."

• 16:01Josh Clark?

  Right, you might as well, right?

• 16:03Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 16:03Josh Clark?

  So, there are people out there who are like, "I don't like the wave. I don't like it if we're up seven to nothing. I don't like it if it's a boring game." People need to be paying attention to the game. And if you are into the wave, you're not a real sports fan. Some people think like that, right?

• 16:18Speaker 02

  Announcers, you'll hear announcers get grumpy about it sometimes.

• 16:21Josh Clark?

  So, yeah, some people who don't like it say that it detracts focus from the game. Other people are like, you know, if you do it at the wrong time, you could cost the home team the game.

• 16:30Speaker 02

  Oh, come on.

• 16:31Josh Clark?

  I think the chances of that are pretty slim. But those things have enough momentum that there is a website called StopTheWave.net, which is now a Facebook group and Tumblr. The Texas Rangers on their scoreboard, they had a message back in 2022 that said that fans participating in the wave risk pulled muscles and that children found doing it will be sold to the circus.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  That's so funny.

• 16:57Josh Clark?

  And even Weller, Rob Weller, your friend from Entertainment Tonight, he turned on his own creation, if he was actually the creator. He was gonna start a Stop the Wave movement with bumper stickers and everything, and then he stopped himself. He realized, like, "People still like it. It brings people joy. Who am I to try to get people to stop doing it?"

• 17:16Speaker 02

  That's right. And he's a great man. He's no John Tesh.

• 17:21Josh Clark?

  Oh, man.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  But I say, "Keep the wave going," even though I'm not the most enthusiastic waver, "and stop that tomahawk chop, Atlanta Braves and Kansas City Chiefs and Florida State Seminoles."

• 17:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's as pernicious as kudzu.

• 17:34Speaker 02

  Do the wave instead.

• 17:36Josh Clark?

  That's it for short stuff, everybody. Short stuff is out.

• 17:43Speaker 03

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