To wave, or not to wave. That is not a question. The wave is an abomination in sports, a selfish and childish unexplainable tradition that needs to stop. While it’s easy to point out the stupidity of the wave, there are still those who defend it. I took five defenses of the wave, and aimed to rip them to shreds.

In my short time writing about sports, I’ve written a lot of things. I’ve written about the rise of Devan Dubnyk thanks to a developing technique he’s been taught, I’ve ranked every sweater in Minnesota’s NHL history, and I’ve written about the Minnesota Wild player being upset with a locker room wall responsible for breaking Josh Harding’s ankle, in my first attempt at satire. In all of the funny, or unfunny posts I’ve wrote, my focus has remained the same- a fan trying to enjoy the game in my own way.

That brings me to ‘the wave’.

Last night, during a game between the Twins and Astros, who are both playoff-hopefully teams for the first time in half a decade, Twins fans were doing the wave during the ninth inning of a 3-0 game. A game that could very well decide the postseason fate of both teams, and fans were not hanging on every pitch, but rather watching their creation make its way around the stadium. It was so egregious, it even offended John Bonnes.

https://twitter.com/TwinsGeek/status/637458364969021440

Do you have any idea how hard it is to make John Bonnes use all caps? In the short time that I’ve known John, he’s easily moved in the answer to “Who is the nicest person you know?”, and though he has undying love for his Twins, he’s not know to fly off the handle over anything, but rather likely offer his signature laugh, as he’s known to do. But this was no laughing matter.

It seems to me that we’re reaching a tipping point in sports right now with the wave, a completely useless fan participation event that grates at every real sports fan’s soul like nails on a chalkboard. The root of the problem is as it always is, the money. Sports teams that host beautifully complex contests of athleticism and skill, in state of the art stadiums built exclusively for viewing said contests, rely on attracting the “casual fan” to keep the cash flow rolling.

As cutthroat at the entertainment industry is, and this very much includes sports, the scratch and claw for the “casual fan” is as much of a struggle as ever, and you end up with stadiums that have just as much stimulus not related to the game being played as the game itself. In this day in age where entertainment is omnipresent, and people are watching Netflix while attending their child’s soccer practice, its seems as though we’ve lost touch with the purpose of entertaining ourselves with just one form of entertainment.

Now, I have no issue with the casual fan. They’re the bread that makes the sandwich when it comes to sports financially, and while they’re seen as either bandwagon jumpers or clueless mouth breathers, they comprise a huge portion, dare I say a majority, of each and every attended professional sporting event around the world. Sports needs the casual fan like animals need food. But with that food, sometimes comes unintended consequences. There’s tons of them, from inappropriate booing, to stupid, misplaced chants and general mob mentality that turns uninformed hot takes into commonly believed ideologies. But for the purposes of this article, we’ll stick to the wave. For now.

The wave is simple. It’s easy, it’s a little fascinating, and according to other people’s opinion, it’s “fun”. Now, I understand the attraction, seeing you and 18,000-45,000 people trying to participate in something that unifies and entertains you sounds like a great time, except for the fact that you’re all watching your favorite team play their sport, which should A. Unify you and B. Entertain you. But for some, this clearly isn’t enough, and they’ll defend their right to participate in this sophomoric practice until the bitter end. So for every defense of the wave, I can tell you why it’s wrong.

1. Fans pay money to attend sporting events, and should have the right to do whatever they want, being a paying customer.

-Fair point, but the problem with you doing whatever you want is that it affects other people. While you see the wave as harmless fun, what you’re really doing is inadvertently taking away from other peoples enjoyment of the game, whether that be lemmings who are now joining you doing the wave and not watching the game, or fans of the game who do not want to do the wave, but are now staring into the back of your Jason Kubel jersey/plumbers crack instead seeing a pitch that could decide the game for their beloved ballclub.

The wave is modern selfishness represented as a sports viewing tradition, and for once, millennials aren’t even to blame. If you’re doing the wave, you’re not watching the game, and that’s fine, it’s your choice, but collectively, you and your wave accomplices are taking away from the game experience for literally thousands of other fans. Thousands.

Buying a ticket to a sporting event doesn’t give anyone carte blanche to ruin the experience for anyone around them. While you’re having your “fun”, you’re literally taking away the enjoyment from someone else by blocking his or her view. And if your argument hinges on the idea that the people directly behind you don’t mind and/or are also doing the wave, you’re missing the point. The wave is around the stadium, possibly covering every section and every seat. If you’re perpetuating the wave, you’re just as responsible for someone across the stadium from you as the person directly behind you.

2. We need to entertain ourselves during a “boring” game.

-This might be the one that offends me the most. I realize that I’m a special breed of sports nerd, and that you may not remember where you were when Byron Buxton was drafted out of high school, but I do. To me, the game is everything but boring. It’s a symphony of skill, athleticism, strategy, luck, planning, and all sorts of other things that may make me tear up if I go on too long.

I was once told the game of baseball is all about balance, and the rest is just peripherals. It’s about the pitcher vs. the batter, and balance. Playing defense, baserunning, chewing tobacco and 1990’s hip hop walkup music, while all very important in everyone’s eyes, are just peripherals. While this may be an oversimplification, it points to the focus of the game. It’s about the pitcher and the hitter. While you may see the time between stolen bases and ground rule doubles hit off of catwalks as ‘filler’, it’s anything but.

I’m not asking every casual fan to become as enthralled with the sport as I am, that’s asking far too much. But for the brief time that you’re at a baseball game, instead of entertaining yourself with the wave, try. Instead of doing your best windy meadow impression, talk to the people around you about the game. Notice what the pitcher is doing, read the radar gun and watch the hitter’s swings. Explain to your child what the infield fly rule is, before they’re ever confused by it. If you don’t know what the infield fly rule is, ask someone around you, and join the brotherhood of baseball nerds, if only temporarily, if only for a few hours.

All of this applies to other sports. Hockey arguably never has a dull moment during gameplay, even to the casual fan, and the breaks between are much too short to even consider starting a wave. Football and basketball are essentially the same argument. Soccer, on the other hand, may be the one caveat. I’m not sure where purists stand there, but it seems like much of the experience there IS fan participation, so maybe that’s too close to call, but let’s refrain from the wave there too, just for consistency’s sake.

3. Lots of people are not paying attention anyway, it’s a victimless crime.

-This one is the most modern of defenses, as every sporting event now features thousands of people buried face first into their phones for at least some portion of the game. However, while that’s plenty factual, it’s not always necessarily what it seems. There are undoubtedly loads of people perusing cat pictures and playing candy crush during a sporting event.

However, as one of the guiltiest of phone watchers, I can tell you that’s not always the case. Being in the blogging community even as briefly and likely forgettable as I have been, I’ve developed relationships with many other writers and fans, and every professional game in the state of Minnesota is like a hangout, thanks to social media. I don’t remember what it was like watching games before Twitter, but I don’t care to remember, because the insight, comedy and overall discussion about sports as they’re being played has changed the way that many people watch sports, and while it comes off as rude and inattentive, it’s really not. I realize my example may seem like a slim minority of those nose to phone people, but there are many more fans, not just bloggers enjoying the game with social media the way I do.

Furthermore, this is a classic ‘two wrongs don’t make a right’ situation. Sure, people are increasingly tuned out to the outside world and generally oblivious, and this also counts at sporting events. But that does not make up the entirety of the crowd, and it goes back to my first point about ruining the experience for others. I don’t want to read a wonderful tweet from one of the Twins beat writers about Miguel Sano’s ball exit speed, only to look up to the game and find your aforementioned Jason Kubel jersey/plumber’s crack in my face, instead of the next batter.

4. We’re being good fans, making noise and cheering for our team.

-Wrong, wrong wrong. Much like fans chanting Duuuuuubbb after every time Devan Dubnyk so much looked at a hockey puck this spring, it might feel right to you, being a good little participating fan, cheering for your club, you it’s misplaced. Players enjoy it when crowds cheer, absolutely, I don’t think anyone is here to deny that. But much like booing at inappropriate times and starting bad chants, if it doesn’t make sense, then why are you doing it? You’re not being a good fan be essentially yelling gibberish at the top of your lungs for the purpose of noise-making.

And whether you prefer to ‘Wooo!” along with your wave or not is kind of irrelevant here, as either way, it has absolutely nothing to do with the game being played, silently or boisterously. You’re not proudly chanting your team’s name, you’re not beckoning for a pitcher’s strikeout, you’re doing a completely unrelated activity to the sport you’re watching, which is proven by the fact that you see that wave at every different kind of sporting event.

Being a fan shouldn’t be about just being as obnoxious as you possibly can for three hours on a weeknight, and though there are tons, upon tons of obnoxious things happening at a baseball game, you don’t need to add to them. Drunk fans cheering like idiots and swearing in front of your children is just as distracting to the entertainment that you paid for as your entire section all standing and sitting on cue. Imagine the wave during a major symphony performing and you might get the idea of how offensive it is to not only the people who paid to watch it, but also the people performing.

If your response to that is arguing that you don’t cheer loudly for your favorite flutist, but that’s perfectly acceptable at a baseball game, I understand the argument, but it is again wrong. Cheering is as inherent to sports as sitting quietly is to symphonies, as both are the expected behavior for viewing those events. You may argue that the buffoon standing up in front of you and screaming something obscene is just as distracting as the wave, and you’re right. That d-bag is basically a one-man wave, taking away from your enjoyment of the game for a brief period of time. And while he may ruin the play for you, he is only one person, which can’t be said for the wave.

The most important point I can possibly make is if you’re doing the wave, you’re not watching the game. It’s as simple as that, and you can argue it all you want, but it’s kind of irrefutable. If you are truly watching the game, why are you doing the wave, and if you’re doing the wave, how can you be watching the game? Instead of paying to watch the best athletes in the world do their job, you’re looking to your right at a section full of accountants, truck drivers and school teachers for the cue to block the view of the fan behind you, who may be there to actually watch their favorite team. The picture I found for this article absolutely sums up my argument. In the foreground, an out of focus ballplayer, while in the background, the fans take center stage.

5. It’s fun for the kids! Think of the children!

-It’s cowardly, really, to use kids as a human shield, in any instance, and especially when defending a practice that it has been made painstakingly clear is wrong. Using the enjoyment of an oblivious child to justify the wrongdoing of such a selfish activity is absurd to me. Also, if you’re not bringing your child to a game to watch the game (which we’ve established doing the wave is not watching the game), then why did you bring them? While this might be a little hyperbolic, the central point is still valid, which leads to another suggestion.

Teach your kids sports. I was a sports late bloomer, having parents that are very much in the casual fan part of the spectrum, and had to learn everything myself. I’ve connected with my parents in other facets of life, but any and every opportunity to teach your children something about the world we live in needs to be taken. The teaching your child the infield fly rule reference above wasn’t a snarky crack, I’m serious. It doesn’t matter if your child has no interest in learning the game being played or will never play that game, or even if you don’t know much about the game being played. Teach your kids what you know, and everything you know, and they’ll be better off for it. I went into recess in 4^th grade having no idea what a ‘down’ was in football, because I had never actively watched a football game. Baseball I was even further behind in, and while I’ve done a fine job catching up to the pack, I can’t even imagine the fascination I would’ve had as a growing, inquizative child knowing some of the things I know now.

In the end, this is either preaching to the choir, or falling on deaf ears, I know. Teams will never do anything to discourage the wave, for fear of losing out on those precious, full-price paying casual fans. The wave will go on, because only a select few want to stop it. Purists will go on angrily cursing the Neanderthals standing and sitting during crucial baseball games, and clueless fans will go on entertaining themselves because they don’t fully understand what they’re watching. But if this changes one person’s mind, then it was all worth it. And if that one person will stand up for sitting down, maybe his neighbor with sit down too, and so on, and so on.

Photo by Jake Roth-USA TODAY Sports