Tank Stumper 12/20/05

[NJTank]

What professional sports team is often credited (blammed) for inventing the wave?

[jkrdevil]

The Oakland Athletics.

[infrared41]

I always heard it originated in Seattle with the Seahawks although there was supposed to have been a crude version of it being done in Baltimore at Orioles games before that.

[bterreson]

In 1981 a Yell Leader (Rob Weller) of the Washington Huskies Started "the Wave" he first started going up and down through the student section, but when he went side-to-side it kept going around Husky Stadium. (my father was at the game)

[KCScout76]

In 1981 a Yell Leader (Rob Weller) of the Washington Huskies Started "the Wave" he first started going up and down through the student section, but when he went side-to-side it kept going around Husky Stadium. (my father was at the game)

No, No, No - it was in 1937, Wally "The Wave" Wilson, would wave his arms up and down and get the crowd to do it at the polo grounds in New York. He was kicked out so he took his act to baseball and other college games, raising it's popularity in the late 1940s.

[IronChefShark]

The Oakland Athletics.

ive always thought that was it too.

figures that the green elephant fans would start something so stupid.

even the novice fans of the Stockton Thunder ECHL team know better then to keep a wave going.

[Sal Monella]

The exact origin of the wave is disputed. It first gained popularity in the United States in the early 1980s, with the Oakland Athletics baseball team reporting that the first appearance of the wave at a Major League Baseball game was led by professional cheerleader Krazy George Henderson in Oakland, California on October 15, 1981, in an American League Championship Series game against the New York Yankees.

Others claim that the first wave originated in Seattle at the University of Washington's Husky Stadium on October 31, 1981, at the prompting of cheerleader (later Entertainment Tonight cohost) Robb Weller. The wave was apparently introduced into the soccer community at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, from which the name "Mexican wave" derives. In Brazil, Germany, Italy and other countries it's called "la ola" (or simply ola) (Spanish for "The wave").

[slapshot]

I've read in a number of places that it started at a Seahawks game, I think in 1980.

[yh]

I'd always heard the Rob Weller story, and if I'm not mistaken, the wave's big "break" came during the 1983 USFL season when it was a mainstay of Oakland Invader games.

[NJTank]

The Seahawks are said to have created the wave when fans particiapted in the blue wave back in their expansion year 1976.