Wave it goodbye — please!

By  Tony Zonca — MikeDragoSports.com senior contributor

I have always hated the display of The Wave at ballgames.  I especially hated the practice during close, late-inning games with tension and playoff implications in the air.

But then it would swell, an ocean roar begun by some nihilistic group with a short attention span.

What that suggested to me is that these were hardly serious baseball fans.  I always felt that way about the home fans of the Reading Phillies.  Most of them had no idea who the opponent was that night, nor did they have a clue about where the R-Phils stood in the standings, nor could they name three players on the team.

They were there for the food, the Crazy Hot Dog Vender, between-inning festivities and occasionally the fireworks.  And The Wave.

I realize I speak for my generation of baseball fan.  We grew up in an era when you went to the ballpark to SEE a game, not to be SEEN at the game.

I can only hope The Wave has vanished, gone forever like the Macarena.

I had planned to watch all three televised days of the NFL draft.  Sad to say, I barely made it through the first round.  At my age I become depressed while watching the escalating display of the dumbing down of America.  And the malady is everywhere.  Just look at politics and the House’s Marjorie Taylor-Greene, who didn’t know the difference between the gestapo and a bowl of gazpacho.  She’s some Georgia peach!

The zany fans at the draft in Kansas City looked like extras from Game of Thrones or the Transformers.  (Speaking of the actual movie Transformers, do they take out life or car insurance?)  Just wondering.

It’s one thing to celebrate your team by wearing its colors; I can even tolerate face painting, but it’s another to act as though the night is a convergence of Halloween, the Mardi Gras and New Year’s Eve on Times Square.

And why, when the camera pans on them do they appear to be angry, like pro wrestlers promoting a big upcoming event, growling and gesturing wildly.  These are grown men and women.  They likely would do The Wave at the Academy of Music.

Then, on the third day, it is their team’s turn to make a pick.  “With the 117th pick in the 2023 NFL draft, the Tennessee Titans select Josef Kozinsky, offensive tackle, South Dakota State.”

The Titans fans go wild, even though not one of them has ever heard of Kozinsky and couldn’t find South Dakota on a map.  But that red light went on, so it signaled their duty to perform.  And then go home to watch the taped version.  I hope you were proud.

Fans of the same ilk show up at NBA games, especially at halftime and postgame, when the TV analysts hold sway.  They carry on in the background like a bunch of preschoolers.  It is nothing if not distracting.  Can’t the TV people add a backdrop to the panel of “experts” so we can concentrate when Charles Barkley makes a fool of himself?

Baseball and football seem to bring out the primal instincts of fans.  Have you ever heard of the horror stories coming out of the 700 level at the Vet during Eagles games?   It was not a place to bring your bible-study group.  It got so bad that management had to actually appoint state magistrates to games to issue fines or worse.

It has been written that sports are a microcosm of life.  Thank God I’m in the bottom of the ninth.

(Next, the players and the media.)