How the pandemic turned me into a ‘Wave’ person
I have always hated the Wave.
Even as a kid, when I would go to baseball games — which amounted to a game or so a season — I’d look disdainfully down on the masses of people standing up and throwing their hands skyward in unison.
Robots. Lemmings. Sheep.
Cries of “oh here it comes!!” and “it’s going to make it all the way around!!!” were met with Al-Gore-like sighs and eye-rolling by yours truly.
And I always pledged to myself that I would never grow up to be one of those people — usually bro-looking dudes in their mid 20s — who started the wave, imploring people to get on their feet and cheer.
See, I was the kid — and now the adult — that brought my own scorebook to baseball games. And kept score throughout, always having to lean around the Wavers to see whether the official scorer decided that dribbler up the third base line was a hit or an error.
(Nerd Sidebar: For the last 20 year or so, I’ve been using this scorebook. It’s a good one! After my last one runs out, I am going to switch to this scorebook, which looks amazing and was designed by the Washington Nationals play-by-play announcer!)
I thought of myself as a baseball purist. I loved the game for the 2–3 dropped third strike put out. For the 5–4–3–2 double play. (I saw this one in person!!) For the prolonged pickle play that winds up with a safe runner.
I was at the ballpark to watch the game. Not to do the damn wave. Or to bat a beachball to some other section of the crowd. (That’s a whole other riff.) I was a REAL baseball fan.
Then came the Covid-19 pandemic.
I went to see the Nationals play the Miami Marlins on Sept. 1, 2019. (Nats won 9–3; Ryan Zimmerman and Yan Gomes hit back-to-back homers in the 6th inning. And, yes, I know all of this because I looked in my scorebook.)
I didn’t see another baseball game in person until June 20, 2021. (Nats beat the Mets 5–2 thanks to 3(!) homers by Kyle Schwarber.)
I did the math. I went 658 days without seeing a baseball game in person.
And during that time something changed in me: I turned into a fan of the Wave.
At my first Nats game back — in late June — the Wave broke out around the 5th inning. (Sidebar: My working theory for the timing was that it was about 10,000 degrees out and everyone just wanted an excuse to get their sweaty butts off the burning hot seats.)
And, like the Grinch’s heart growing three sizes bigger, I noticed that my long-held Wave revulsion didn’t immediately pop up. Instead I watched — with my kids and my wife — the Wave try to make its way around Nats Park. After a few failed attempts, it got all the way around. And I was, amazingly, thrilled by it.
Turns out it wasn’t a one-off either.
At the tail-end of a family vacation in Colorado, we went to see the Rockies plays the St. Louis Cardinals on Saturday night in Denver. (The Rockies won 3–2 thanks to a 461-foot, 7th inning home run by Trevor Story. He was 2–4 in the game with that homer as well as a fly-out to right in the 1st, a grounder back to the pitcher in the 3rd and a single in the 6th. Scorebook!)
Again, sometime in the middle innings, the Wave broke out. And, again, late-stage-Grinch-like, I found my normal disgust replaced with a totally different feeling: Joy.
Yes, watching thousands of people standing up, waving their arms over their heads and yelling something like “Whooaaaaaa” is inherently weird. And would be VERY difficult to explain to an alien civilization. (Which we might have to do one day!)
But, as I’ve now realized, there’s also real beauty in it. The Wave is simply an expression of communal joy. It’s 40,000 people (or so) all watching and doing the same thing at the same time for no other reason than, well, it’s sort of fun.
It’s a reminder that, for all of our differences, we all sort of like standing up and cheering for no real reason. And that joy — even in the smallest things — is not just possible but easily achieved.
It’s why kids love the Wave the most. They are joy machines — free from the burdens and cynicism that seem to many people to be the signatures of adulthood.
So, what changed me from a Wave hater to a Wave believer?
A global pandemic that has killed more than 600,000 Americans and almost 4 million people globally, I think.
Forced to stay away from people for the last 16 months, I’ve reentered the social world a lot like I entered my 7th grade dances: Excited and nervous. And another thing: Thankful.
Thankful for other people and the opportunity to have shared experiences. Thankful for the guys sitting behind me at the Rockies game who were trying to guess what the next pitch would be. Or the lady taking my ticket who admired my scorebook. (SCOREBOOK FOR THE WIN!) And even for the woman who kept cheering “Let’s go 1st place Mets” as the Metropolitans were losing to the Nats. (Ok, maybe not her.)
The point is this: After so long living in fear of being around people, the ability to share a common moment of joy and happiness feels like a precious gift to me.
In other words: Count me as a Wave convert. Big time.
