Will The Wave soon vanish from Nationals Park?
If you've gone to a sporting event at any point in your life, chances are you've either participated in, or looked on in disapproval at, The Wave.
The rhythmic stand-up, sit-down, arm-raising cheer has been an off-and-on presence at many baseball stadiums since the early 1980s, and Nationals Park has been no exception.
But now, a group of Nationals fans has had enough, and they're circulating an mock online petition to stop the wave at the Navy Yard ballpark.
As with most petitions, it has picked up steam with the help of a handful of fans on Twitter (#KillTheWave, if you're interested). But the blog Nats101 has been ground zero for the marshaling effort. Nats101 Editor in Chief Frank Lattuca has written that the aim of the movement is education, not punishment.
"No one wants anyone put in jail, or thrown out of Nationals Park (or at least, not really) for doing/starting the wave," Lattuca wrote on the blog earlier this week. "We frankly don’t have the time or energy to try and convince the Nationals or anyone else to put some official stop to it ... The hope (at least our hope) is that if enough people 'get it' and don’t want to do the wave, the wave won’t happen on the park [on] its own."
Anti-wave partisans have at least one backer in a Nats uniform. Reliever Ryan Mattheus went on the record late in the 2012 season, calling The Wave, "the worst thing in sports." Mattheus' staff mates have not been quite as strident in their criticism. However, the movement endures.
"I’m not a fan of banning forms of expression," Lattuca wrote, "but I do think that not all forms of expression need to be, well, um, expressed?"