In Defense of the Wave

The Wave is good. The Wave is fun. The Wave is communitarian.

The Wave is not a taunt. The Wave is not a game state celebration. The Wave is not directed at anything.

I regularly get into it with anti-Wave curmudgeons on twitter. They have no understanding of the Wave or its history. Oilers’ fans should be particularly partial to the Wave as it traces its roots back to the glory days when Pocklington would pony up a small wad of cash to fly in Krazy George Henderson to “whoop up the crowd” as Peter Gzowski documents in his iconic The Game of Our Lives (1981):

Northlands Coliseum, Edmonton, Friday, February 13: The Quebec Nordiques are here, and so is Krazy George. He wears rolled up jeans, an Oiler sweater with Krazy George written across the back, and a rubber mask that makes him look bald and wild. Underneath he is bald. His name is Henderson; the George is real, if not the Krazy. He lives in Colorado. The Oilers, along with other professional sports teams around the continent, bring him in at $500 a night to whoop up their crowds. He carries a drum and a stick, and sprints around the upper rows of seats, leading cheers. He has some theatrical tricks: He will start a cheer in one corner and then roll it around the arena, with each section rising from its seats as it yells. The players find it more distracting than encouraging.

I wrote about Krazy George years and years ago in a piece on enforcers and mascots (this site has completely stripped my authorship but happily maintains the article so I’m not complaining, but I want to make clear that I am not the dude listed as the author, which is me), likening his performance, and orchestration of the wave to the work of the team mascot:

A mascot’s performance, by definition, is peripheral to the action of a competitive game. It’s a supplement that adds value (of dubious purpose and quality) to a perfectly sufficient exercise of competition. It takes place at the margins of the game – not on the arena of play or during the game’s course. It is superfluous and that’s just fine. The audience experience of competition doesn’t exclude the fun of stadium music, hot dogs, and visions of a silly, little man running about.

A host of things happen in parallel to attended sporting events that don’t directly relate to the matter at hand (the sporting contest itself). Some of them happen before, or after, or outside the venue. And some of them happen in the venue itself. Most big, modern sports arenas now operate a huge array of parallel entertainment opportunities (kids activities, prize giveaways/contests, restaurants/bars, etc.). There’s a general and pervasive argument by sports curmudgeon’s that these things are, as Gzowski notes above, “distracting” from the game itself, maybe even tainting the purity of the turf. Or, maybe you’ll hear that they are simply cynical time and money-suckers. That they overwhelm the senses with noises, lights, activity, etc.

All of which brings me to the Wave. It’s detractors generally advance two arguments against it:

1. The Wave is Antagonistic; It’s Tempting Fate

On this wise, the Wave is considered a taunt, or hubristic celebration of a goal or lead targeted at the opposing team. It’s a classic “planning the parade route in Spring Training” kind of deal. This would put the Wave in league with the racist and outmoded “Tomahawk Chop,” or the “knee slap, knee slap, clap” of We Will Rock You, or the monotone, duo-syllabic taunt, in hockey almost always targeted at the opposing goaltender, where a name is broken into two parts and repeated in unison, like this famous Simpsons’ scene:

But this completely misunderstands the Wave, its purpose, and target. As a letter to the editor of the New York Times wrote in 1983 (quoted in the Wave’s wiki)

 “There are three reasons why the wave caught on at Michigan Wolverine games: It gave the fans something to do when the team was leading its opponent by 40 points, it was thrilling and exciting to see 105,000 people in the stands moving and cheering, and Bo Schembechler asked us not to do it.”

Echoing Gzowski’s contention above that Krazy George was brought in to “whoop up the crowd,” the Wave is properly understood as “crowd-oriented” and not “game-oriented.” Now, we can certainly argue that there are some intangible knock-on effects (for good or ill) for game play stemming from an energized crowd. But, it’s clear that the whole point is for the crowd to relate to itself as a community, to participate in something, to get up and stretch for a moment, and be rejuvenated from the mostly passive experience of watching something seated. As any desk job hack will tell you, sitting very evidently depresses the animating spirits. It sucks the energy right out of you and in turn the crowd.

The proper analogy for the Wave is the 7th Inning Stretch. Like the Wave, the 7th Inning Stretch has no relation to the game state, doesn’t target the opposition, or even reference the game directly. The 7th Inning Stretch is a communitarian tradition, complete with a silly song, where the crowd is compelled to snap out of the stupor of sitting, stand up, take a breath, and participate in the community. It’s an opportunity to remind the isolated, seated individual that they are part of a community, brought together to share in an experience. Without these contrived moments, we can very easily slip into our own little world. We may as well be watching at home on TV.

But more to the point, the Wave is decidedly not about taunting the opposition, or celebrating prematurely. The very mechanics of the Wave dictate that it is not about the game, or its competitors, or its outcome. In order to catch the Wave, fans need to concentrate on the crowd as the Wave moves around the stands toward their spot. You have to ignore the game in order to participate in the Wave.

2. The Wave is for Kids; It’s Silly and Unserious; It’s Distracting

Now, the detractors have me dead to rights on this one. And, as a self-described inveterate crank, who loathes crowds, craft fairs, noise, bright lights, etc., I should, by rights, be on their side on this one. I don’t like, for example, zany music. I harbor a strong disaffection for the outlandish, theatrical, and earnest.

The Wave, like the 7th Inning Stretch, isn’t simply running in parallel to the event. These are disruptive, invading practices. Even if you choose not to participate they will overwhelm you, and you will feel a soft pressure to join in. They are annoying.

So, what makes them worthwhile?

Well, let’s note that the disruption is distinctly different from the typical disruptions you encounter at sporting events: the drunk guys, the guys that will never sit down, the guys that get up and leave their seat crossing in front of you constantly, the guys that bang on the glass, or blow a horn/noisemaker, etc. This is self-centered asshole behavior. The Wave is essentially communitarian. It’s not an isolated individual, or small group, stealing the show and/or ignoring the community around them. The Wave is a staged community practice and tradition. Just like the 7th Inning Stretch, it is an expected, repeated event. I honestly can’t recall a hockey, or baseball game I’ve attended where the Wave hasn’t taken place. And, crucially, the Wave is a limited event. The Wave doesn’t last forever, or drone on and on, or pop up repeatedly. It happens once for a short period of time and then it’s over.

Now, tradition isn’t an argument in and of itself. Just because we have a habit of doing something, doesn’t make it good. However, and particularly in the case of things that are trivial and communitarian, tradition seems like a good to be argued against. That is, the onus is on the detractors to argue its harms outweigh the status quo.

But, I also want to suggest that the trivial, frivolous nature of the practice, something that might suggest it is bad or unserious, is actually one of its winning features. Families know this very well. Observe a family over the course of the year and you’ll find they participate in all manner of trivial practices (Friday is family movie night!) that are fun, create meaning and opportunity for regular engagement. One of the most rewarding parts of family life is the ability to transform isolated, mundane tasks and practices into rich, meaningful traditions: “we have to go get flu shots” turns into “burger night at A&W!”; “we have to rake the leaves” turns into “who wants to jump in the leaf pile!” and “it’s time to put the kids in the giant leaf bags for our annual pictures!” etc. There’s a stump on the way to/from my son’s swimming lessons. For years now, as we pass it, we give it a little pat, quick to rebuke one another if we’ve forgotten: “you forgot to pat the little guy!” It’s a completely trivial tradition, but it adds a wealth of meaning and fun to our otherwise everyday experience.

The Wave doesn’t have the emotional closeness, or resonance of family traditions, obviously. But it does have the spirit of turning the mundane need to stand up and take a stretch into a meaningful tradition. Moreover, as a properly communitarian activity, rather than intimately closed within the family circle, the Wave gestures at the larger community one inhabits but rarely engages directly. As social scientists have argued, at least since Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone (2000), our modern, autonomous lives have separated the individual from the community leading to any number of harms both individual and collective. This isn’t, of course, to say that the Wave is some panacea to our social ills. But it is to recognize that the value of engaging the community around you in a participatory manner, even in silly and trivial ways, is a kind of personal and public good.

Final Quibble

What I would say, however, is that the detractors have a point about timing. As a best practice, the Wave should, much like the 7th Inning Stretch, take place in the final act of the game, when spirits are flagging, and not during game play and/or not during a tense competitive moment. In my experience, however, this is not generally a live concern. Fans are heavily attuned to the game state and not prone to break off from tense competitive moments to start or join in a silly, communitarian ritual. It just isn’t a thing that happens. That said, the best time to start the Wave is early in the 3rd Period during a break in play.