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Prologue
THE FIRST WAVE
A study of the NBC videotape verifies Krazy George’s claim.
In the fifth, seventh and ninth innings, a rolling wave
occurred. It was unmistakably, indisputably the inception of
the Fan Wave.
Bucky Walter, “Birth of The Wave,”
San Francisco Examiner
, September 9, 1984
ctober 15, 1981, forty-seven thousand Oakland Athletics fans and I
made history. Although we didn’t know it at the time, we were about
to launch a sport’s phenomenon that would quickly travel from stadium to
stadium and eventually span the globe.
It was the American League
Championship Series between the Oakland A’s and the New York Yankees
,
named after the brash, flamboyant Oakland manager Billy Martin, was the
craze of the San Francisco Bay Area.
O
Joe Garagiola was announcing our first home game on national TV. It was
Game Three of the best of five. We had already lost the first two in New
York. We had to win! The team knew it! The fans knew it! I knew it! The
crowd was pumped and eager to try anything. So was I!
Soon after the gates opened at the Oakland Coliseum, I was roaming the
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