The Wave turns 25
By: Bob | October 18th, 2006
I’m old enough to remember a time when the wave was still a novelty at sporting events. These days, the practice of fans standing up and sitting down is almost as commonplace as reading amusing quotes from Jose Mourinho. The indelible wave, or Mexican wave as some erroneously call it, turns 25 this year and we can all thank a man named Krazy George for making our lives just a little bit richer because of it.
You might remember the wave taking the world by storm during the World Cup in Mexico in 1986, but long before that the wave reared its ugly/beautiful head at a baseball game if you are to believe the wave historians. The man who led the charge was Krazy George, a professional mascot who among other things used to lead the cheers at the old NASL San Jose Earthquakes games.
Since then, the wave has become part of the fabric of football and sports, and it even has been studied by scientists.
If that sounds complicated, consider the work of a team of scientists from Eotvos University in Hungary and Dresden Technological University in Germany. Using a mathematical model designed to determine how a pacemaker stimulates heart cells, they studied films from Mexican soccer stadiums to figure out how waves develop.
Their findings, as first reported in the Sept.12, 2002, issue of the science journal Nature: Between 25 and 35 people are enough to initiate a wave that typically moves at a speed of about 20 seats per second and is about 15 seats wide at any given point.
So there you have it. 25-35 people can start a wave and change the world. Today we salute the one man who started it all, Krazy George and his invention, the wave.
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