Sorting Out the Ranks in a Dodger Stadium ‘Wave’

Baseball is ritual, and so is attending a major-league game. If you want to fit in, there’s your choice of a cap to wear--for the home team, or for the visitors from your old home town. There’s your score card--the one in the program, or an official version with a sturdier back to write on. There’s your stop at the hot-dog stand--chow down now or gamble on missing a play that will go into every anthology.

In the past few years, another ritual has popped up in baseball: being part of a wave.

For those recluses who have never attended a sporting event in a stadium in the past couple of years, or who have no TV (are there any such people left in the Western Hemisphere?), the wave is an undulating movement of the crowd that travels around a ballpark, in which people in successive sections stand up, wiggle their arms and hands in the air over their heads, make a short shrill noise, and then sit down. This moves from section to section until everyone in the place has been up and down.

I guess I’ve been in 50 waves, and at a recent Dodger-Pirate game, my friend Dave and I got into social analysis as we waited our section’s turn.

It’s interesting to note that the wave always starts in the cheap seats. Like lighting a campfire, several attempts are usually needed to get it going. First, three or four sections stand up in the bleachers, usually led by some guy running amok in the aisle without his shirt on. These fellows must come from some central casting agency. They always have a beer in one hand and a hat that says Caterpillar. Psychologically, their belts don’t appear to go through all the loops.

These first few attempts at kindling a wave seem to peter out by the time it gets a quarter of the way through the reserved seats. The collapse is always followed by much booing by the people in the cheap seats. Several fans direct mini-one-finger waves at the complacent reserved-seat patrons.

After about the third try, the people in the reserved seats start to feel sorry for the bleacherites, not only for their poor view of the game, but for their lot in life in general. Out of guilt, the reserved- and box-seat sections finally do their bit to keep the wave going.

A curious thing happens here. The nature of the wave changes as it gets to the more expensive seats. The party animals of the bleachers tend to be more uninhibited (more inebriated?) in their vertical leap and yelling. The ladies and gentlemen in the better seats tend to rise half-heartedly, and with less noise, as the wave passes through their section. Probably due to their age, they are not as limber. Probably due to fatter wallets, they, on average, weigh more. Probably due to running their own businesses and professions, they are used to someone else doing the jumping for them.

Baseball is better than other sports for wave-making due to its vast moments of inactivity. One exception to this was the 100,000 spectators at the 1984 Olympic soccer finals who created an international tidal wave in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. The wave whirled a full 11 times around the stadium in a remarkable display of cooperation, enjoyment and endurance. Truly the Olympic spirit as it was intended.

At a so-so baseball game, especially if your team is looking toward the playoffs as the time it can start vacation, it’s hard to get enough people enthusiastic for a good wave. Half of them are off at the restrooms, and the other half have their laps loaded with hot dogs and drinks. If it’s a good game, and you’re concentrating, a wave can be irritating. For players, it must always be distracting. I imagine a pitcher would find it extremely bothersome to watch this mass of humanity writhe across his field of vision.

For those hurlers earning $250,000 or more, who cares. For us fans, a wave is a necessary part of the ritual. It lets the child in us out for a few moments, something we can all stand a little more of. Besides, how else can we get a good look at that gorgeous body two sections over?