Learning to Love the Wave

Every time I tell people about how much I hate "The Wave," the expression on their face is exactly the same.  It's the same as the look in Bob Cratchit's eyes after Scrooge tells him that he has to work on Christmas in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol.  For a split second their eyes are filled with anger, but their rage quickly dissipates only to be replaced with a look of confused pity.  I know they're wondering what combination of horrible Wave-related incidents led me to so aggressively hate this classic American sporting tradition, praying that some day I will regain the ability to love and appreciate the joy they themselves have found in deliriously popping out of their seats like a prairie dog.  In response, I always rattle off my go-to set of Bah-Humbugs: I pay good money to watch these games, not the backside of the guy in front of me!  The game's the main event here; don't get distracted by the crowd-orchestrated freak show slowly revolving around the stadium!  While we're mindlessly recreating natural phenomena, why stop with The Wave?  Let's get some guys in dark shirts to walk in front of people wearing light shirts and call it The Eclipse while we're at it!

I spent Tuesday evening at an admittedly boring Yankee game versus the Los Angeles Angeles.  I went with a group of friends and we purchased tickets at the last minute off of StubHub, so the only affordable block of seats we could find were in section 434B, the absolute last section in left field.  With the Yankees down 8-2 in the late innings and showing few signs of life, my Wave-sense (the ability to sense someone trying tO start The Wave anywhere in a stadium) began tingling.  I looked to my left and saw, in THE ast seat of our row adjacent to the last aisle in the stadium, a Japanese tourist in a Hideki Matsui jersey trying to start The Wave.  At the top of his lungs he was counting to three - in Japanese, no less - trying to convince section 434B to start The Wave and propel it around the upper deck.  He tried a handful of times, while I gave him the dirtiest oF dirty looks after each iteration, and when each of his attempts failed to make it to the end of our section, let alone across Yankee Stadium, it appeared that he was ready to give up.  I relaxed once again, slouching into my seat ready to resume my enjoyment of America's pastime without distraction.

It was then that something amazing happened.  When the Japanese man finally sat down, dejected and frustrated, the fans sitting around him encouraged him to keep trying.  First a young kid and his parents pleaded for the Japanese guy to keep trying.  Then two overly-moussed gentlemen who looked like they had stopped by the stadium on their way to a Brooklyn nightclub got in on the act.  Before I knew what was happening, most of our section was helping the guy in the Matsui jersey start The Wave.  Their enthusiasm and noise radiated across the upper deck, and finally an attempted Wave made it across section 434B.  The next attempt traveled four or five section over before it broke, and then, amazingly, one began with enough momentum that it made it all the way across the stadium, not ending until the last human prairie dog popped out of his seat in section 405 in right field.

And as I watched it all unfold, sitting in the section where The Wave had started, I couldn't help but smile.

Just like when Scrooge realized that it was the joy of family, not money, that powered Bob Cratchit's love of Christmas, for the first time in my life I understood why people love The Wave.  After a quarter-century of wondering how fans could ruin a perfectly good baseball game with a nonsensical group demonstration, I get it now.  Some people wait an entire year or more to get to a professional baseball game, work hard to save up enough money to buy their family or friends tickets up in section 434B, and end up having to watch their hometown heroes get hammered.  Without the wave, all they would have had to remember Tuesday night would be their ticket stub and giant sweat stain on their backs.  Once The Wave made it across the upper deck and into Section 405, though, everything changed for those people.  When their friends asked them how their trip to the stadium was the next morning, I'm sure they immediately launched into a story about how, after working together with a bunch of people that they otherwise never would have had a reason to talk to, they helped originate a successful Wave.  No, they didn't get to see a playoff game or a historic home run or even a Yankee win.  But they did create a memory that they could keep long after their ticket stub fades and their Tide (no pun intended) laundry detergent takes care of the sweat.

I'm never going to be the guy who brings a whistle into a stadium or arena and cheerfully attempts to persuade his neighbors to start The Wave.  But after witnessing firsthand how it can transform an otherwise uneventful regular season weekday baseball game into a fan bonding experience, I've gained a level of appreciation for it.  From now on, I'm officially retiring all of my anti-Wave Bah-Humbugs, and the next time it rolls through my section I think the least I can do is jump out of my seat, throw my arms into the air and join the freak show.