The Cards play in St. Louis. My [very large bank employer] has a campus in St. Louis. If I win the half a billion dollar MegaMillions jackpot on Friday, I will quit my job with [very large bank employer] before the weekend is over. Frankly, before Saturday even begins. I will leave a voice mail and mail my computer back.
I am classy like that.
Speaking of classy, did you know that the Cardinals have some sort of "spirit squad"? I don't know much about MLB (obviously), and I'm always watching the dance team or cheerleaders at a sporting event rather than the actual "sports," but this seems weird to me.
Apparently I'm not the first one to wonder about this. As usual, Slate has some answers:
For decades, baseball spurned pompoms. The first American cheerleaders were men who worked the crowds at college football games in the late 19th century; women didn't get involved until the '20s and '30s. In the years that followed, football and basketball players had their feats heralded by organized squads of cheering women, but baseball players had to make do with hollers from the crowd.
Baseball historians aren't sure why the sport went without for so long. But it was a handful of entertainment executives from the Walt Disney Company who helped initiate the change. When Disney purchased the California Angels in 1996, it added some bells and whistles: a six-piece Dixieland jazz band, zany sound effects for foul balls, and the Angel Wings Cheerleaders. The Angel Wings danced on the top of the visitors' dugout between innings, attempting to rile the crowd.
The crowd got riled. Apparently the Angel Wings dancers frequently blocked the views of season ticket holders behind the dugout; from the very start they were heckled and booed. Disney management quickly moved the dance team to a platform in the stands out in right field. From there they continued to lead "dance-offs" that tested the crowd's skills at the macarena and the chicken dance. The Angel Wings Cheerleaders were abandoned the following season.
Despite the shaky start, the Toronto Blue Jays have since brought in the J-Cru Fan Activation Team (now known as the J Force), and the Florida Marlins have introduced the Marlins Mermaids. San Diego has a dance team known as the Pad Squad—pronounced "Pod Squad"—which runs around the field at Padres home games, clapping and tossing T-shirts into the crowd. (Reaction from San Diego fans has been mixed.) The Expos had cheerleaders, too: Indeed, there were those who felt that the Molson EX Girls (who danced to Bananarama on top of the dugout) were an excellent reason to keep baseball in Montreal.
With such a motley record, it's unclear what the future holds for American baseball cheerleaders. But cheerleading already has a firm foothold in the rest of the baseball-playing world. It's de rigueur at games in the Dominican Republic, where women in body stockings dance to recorded merengue music on top of the dugouts. In Korean baseball, football-style cheerleaders with whistles, megaphones, and pompoms get the crowd excited, while college games in Japan feature women dancing quietly with pompoms while men dressed in black lead the cheers.
The next time I go to the Dominican Republic, I am TOTALLY going to a baseball game.
6 comments:
I never really thought about that. Where are all the cheerleaders? No wonder I never cheer at baseball games.
I'm confident that I would not watch baseball if I went to the Dominican Republic even with the added entertainment.
That's fair. I have to say, cheerleaders at a baseball game just seems unnatural.
I think they're unnecessary. Let's do all we can to keep them out.
I was going to make a comment about cheerleading at the professional level, but it was unkind. So, in the spirit of saying nothing if you have nothing nice to say, I will refrain.
On this week's episode of 16 and Pregnant, Mackenzie couldn't wait to get back into cheer and tumbling after her baby Gannon was born.
What kind of name is Gannon? The kind of name that a 16 yr old names her kid.
Who aspires to a cheerleading scholarship to a university and to be a professional tumbler after that? 16 yr olds and circus freaks dreaming of a better life.
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