Give Me a Sign: The Stories Behind 5 Hand Gestures | Mental Floss Give Me a Sign: The Stories Behind 5 Hand Gestures Image credit: Like us on Facebook So much can be said with a hand gesture. Here are the stories behind gestures you might use every day, and some you might not. 1. The Vulcan Salute We all know it, even if we can't all do it. The Vulcan Salute, made famous by Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock on the original Star Trek, has become a cultural icon recognized even by those who have never been to a sci-fi convention. And while the gesture is meant to be from another planet, its inspiration is anything but alien. When Nimoy was a child, he witnessed a Jewish ritual called the "kohane blessing," which uses a hand sign meant to resemble the Hebrew letter "shin," which symbolizes the Hebrew word for "Shaddai," meaning "Almighty (God)." (Got that?) It's made by splitting the hand down the middle—holding the index and middle fingers together, the ring and pinky fingers together—and then the thumb pressed firmly against the side of the hand.

The Orthodox priest giving the blessing holds both hands out in front of him in these strange configurations, palms down. When Nimoy was developing a greeting to be used between Vulcans, he remembered the sign and adapted it, using only one hand held up, and pulling his thumb away from the rest of the hand. Nimoy had no problem doing the salute, but not all Trek actors have been so lucky. William Shatner had to have his fingers tied together with fishing line whenever Captain Kirk needed to use the sign. Even the latest pointy-eared Vulcan, actor Zachary Quinto, who played a younger Mr. Spock in the recent blockbuster film, had to have his fingers stuck together with the skin-safe superglue used by hospitals as a replacement for traditional stitches. 2. The Shaka Sign Folding your three middle fingers down while holding out your thumb and pinky, then twisting your hand around, is a strange gesture to say the least. But if you visit Hawaii, you're likely to see it a lot.

The gesture, called The Shaka Sign, can be interpreted as "Hello," "Goodbye," "Have a nice day," "Take it easy," "Good luck," or, the most popular definition, "Hang loose." Unfortunately, the sign's history is a bit vague. The oldest origin story goes back to the days when Spanish sailors first landed on the Hawaiian Islands. Unable to speak the native tongue, but trying to be friendly, the Spaniards offered to share a drink by mimicking a bottle with their hand with the gesture and tilting back their head. This became such a common greeting that the natives simply believed that's how the Spanish said hello, so they started using the sign whenever the two groups encountered one another. Another theory, from the mid-20th Century, claims the sign was inspired by the wave of a beloved local named Hamana Kalili, who'd lost the middle fingers on one hand. There are multiple theories as to how he lost his fingers: there was a shark attack, they were blown off while using dynamite to catch fish, or perhaps the digits were lost in an accident while working on a sugar plantation. But no one knows for sure anymore.

As if the origin of the gesture isn't mysterious enough, the word Shaka isn't even Hawaiian. However, most people agree the name goes back to a local used car salesman, Lippy Espinda, who would throw up the sign at the end of popular TV commercials during the 1960s and 70s, and say, "Shacka, brah!" ("Shocker, bro!") During his Inauguration Parade, Barack Obama threw the Shaka Sign to greet Honolulu's Punahou School marching band. 3. The Corna Hand gestures can have multiple meanings. Perhaps one of the best examples of this is the "hand horn," also known as the "corna," where only the pinky and the index finger point up while the other fingers are held in the palm under the thumb. If you're in Italy or Spain and you flash this sign towards a man, you might get beaten up. In this culture, the symbol represents the horns of one of nature's most virile animals, the bull. The bull in this case is usually meant to symbolize the guy sleeping with the man's wife behind his back.

The sign can also be interpreted with the cuckold as the bull, who has been symbolically castrated by his wife. Either way it's bound to make him see red. However, turn your palm down and point the extended fingers at someone who doesn't like you, and you're simply guarding yourself from the Evil Eye. In ancient times, bulls were often seen as protective deities, so turning the bull's horns against an enemy was a way of keeping the curse at bay. On a similar note, in South America, if you have the horn sign held up and twist it back and forth, it's known as "lagarto" or Lizard Gesture. Similar to the old superstition "Knock on wood," it's thought that by doing this you can protect yourself from any bad mojo that might occur after someone utters the taboo word "culebra," or snake. Of course the corna is also used by fans of the University of Texas, where they call it the "Hook 'Em Horns." Created in 1955 by student Harley Clark, the sign represents the school's mascot, a Texas longhorn steer named Bevo, and his impressive 72" horns.

Being a Texas native former Governor of Texas, though not a UT alumni, President George W. Bush and his family were known for flashing the Hook 'Em Horns during appearances in the Lone Star State. But there's another group of fans who use the corna, too "“ fans of heavy metal music. The gesture in metal goes back to occultist band Coven, a group heavily inspired by counter culture figures like renowned Satanist Anton LaVey, who used the corna as a sign of the Devil. However, it was Ronnie James Dio, lead singer for Black Sabbath in the late-1970s, that really made the sign take hold in the genre. He borrowed the gesture from his superstitious Italian grandmother who used it to ward off evil. He felt the sign's pagan origins fit perfectly with the subject matter of the band's music. 4. The Pledge of Allegiance Chances are, when you were saying the Pledge of Allegiance in elementary school, you placed your hand over your heart in a sign of adoration for Old Glory. But if you were in school before World War II, you probably used an entirely different gesture to address the flag—the Bellamy Salute.

The editor of a children's publication called The Youth's Companion created the unofficial salute in 1892 shortly after the Pledge was written, and named it after the author, Francis Bellamy. For the first three words of the Pledge ("I pledge allegiance"), the right hand was held at the brow in a military salute. Then, as the reciter got to the phrase, "to my flag" (the original words), the arm was extended up and out, pointing towards the flag, fingers together, with the palm facing up in a gesture of presentation. This pose was held while the rest of the Pledge was recited. However, as the years went by, parts of the Bellamy Salute fell out of use, while others evolved. First, the military salute was abandoned, leaving only the straight arm presentation of the flag. But then the palm went from facing up, to sideways, and by the 1940s, it faced down. This last version became a problem as America entered World War II, because it so closely resembled the stiff-armed salute of dictators Mussolini and Hitler.

The hand over the heart gesture was suggested as a viable alternative and President Franklin Roosevelt signed it into law in 1942 as part of the Flag Code, making it the official gesture for the Pledge of Allegiance we all know today. 5. The High Five The roots of the high five go back to the Jazz Era of the early 20th Century. Black musicians of the time created numerous ways to say hello, such as "giving some skin," "giving five," and later a series of complicated, interconnected handshake gestures called a "dap." Then, in the late-1970s, college and professional basketball players began raising their arms above their heads and slapping the palms of their hands together, in what would later be dubbed the "high five." While no one can say for sure where the high five came from, some believe the first one was exchanged between Glenn Burke and Dusty Baker, baseball players for the L.A. Dodgers, after a home run in 1977. But there is one man who claims he knows the origin of the high five, because he says he's the guy who invented it. Lamont Sleets, Jr.

says he adopted the high five from a salute his father exchanged with old Army buddies from the 5th Infantry regiment, nicknamed "The Five." To say hello, the men would stick their hand straight up in the air, spread their fingers wide, and call out "Five!" Anytime he saw the Five greeting, Sleets Jr. would say "Hi, Five!" to the visiting veteran and slapped the upraised hand with his own. Sleets Jr. went on to become one of the top basketball players at Murray State University in the late-1970s and he brought his odd salutation with him. It became popular with his teammates, and as the team traveled the country to play other schools, Sleets says the gesture caught on. To celebrate this infamous hand gesture, students at the University of Virginia created "National High Five Day," which takes place on the third Thursday in April (yesterday). * * * * * * Have a favorite fun hand gesture we didn't mention? Is there one you've always wondered where it came from? Tell us about it in the comments below! High five : definition of High five and synonyms of High five (English) "Give me five" redirects here.

For the song by AKB48, see Give Me Five! . "Gimme five" redirects here. For the ITV children's show, see Gimme 5 . For other uses, see High five (disambiguation) . A high five between two U.S. Navy Sailors The high five is a celebratory hand gesture that occurs when two people simultaneously raise one hand, about head high, and push, slide or slap the flat of their palm and hand against the palm and flat hand of their partner. The gesture is often preceded verbally by the phrase "Give me five" or "High five". There are many origin stories of the high five, [1] but the two best documented candidates are Glenn Burke of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team on Oct. 2, 1977, and Wiley Brown and Derek Smith of the Louisville Cardinals basketball team during the 1978-1979 season. [2] In the United States , there is an initiative to celebrate the third Thursday of April as National High Five Day. [3] Contents 4 External links Origin The gesture probably originated in American professional sports.

Picture of Drew Storen (right) and Wilson Ramos of the Washington Nationals (2011). The use of the phrase as a noun has been part of the Oxford English Dictionary since 1980 and as a verb since 1981. [4] The gesture takes its name from the "five" fingers and the raising of the hand "high". This is opposed to the "low" five which has been a part of the African-American culture since at least World War II. [2] It's probably impossible to know exactly when the low first transitioned to a high, but there are many creation myths. [2] Magic Johnson once suggested that he invented the high five at Michigan State. [2] Others have suggested it originated in the women's volleyball circuit of the 1960s. [2] Glenn Burke and Dusty Baker For decades, conventional wisdom was that the first high five occurred between Dusty Baker and Glenn Burke of the Los Angeles Dodgers on Oct. 2, 1977 in Dodger Stadium. [2] It was the last day of the regular season, and Dodgers leftfielder Dusty Baker had just gone deep off the Astros' J.R. Richard.

It was Baker's 30th home run, making the Dodgers the first team in history to have four sluggers -- Baker, Ron Cey, Steve Garvey and Reggie Smith -- with at least 30 homers each. It was a wild, triumphant moment and a good omen as the Dodgers headed to the playoffs. Burke, waiting on deck, thrust his hand enthusiastically over his head to greet his friend at the plate. Baker, not knowing what to do, smacked it. "His hand was up in the air, and he was arching way back," says Baker, now 62 and managing the Reds. "So I reached up and hit his hand. It seemed like the thing to do." [2] After retiring from baseball, Burke, who was one of the first openly "out" homosexual professional athletes, used the high five with other homosexual residents of the Castro district of San Francisco , where for many it became a symbol of gay pride and identification. [2] Louisville Cardinals Another origin story places it at a University of Louisville Cardinals basketball practice during the 1978-79 season.

[2] Forward Wiley Brown went to give a plain old low five to his teammate Derek Smith , but suddenly Smith looked Brown in the eye and said, "No. Up high." Brown thought, "yeah, why are we staying down low? We jump so high," raised his hand and the high five was supposedly born. [2] High fives can be seen in highlight reels of the 1978-79 Louisville team. [2] During a telecast of a 1980 game, announcer Al McGuire shouted: "Mr. Brown came to play! And they're giving him the high-five handshake. High five!" [2] Conor Lastowka Recently the Burke story was challenged by Lamont Sleets, who played basketball for Murray State University . He claimed to be the originator of the high five in the 1960s because his father's Vietnam buddies were called The Five and the young Sleets would jump up and slap their hands and say "Hi, Five!". [2] However the Sleets story was a hoax, a publicity stunt concocted by the founders of the "National High Five Day" (est.

2002) [5] - they needed a 'founder' and so invented the story and plugged in Sleets name. [2] "We just found the guy [Sleets] and made up a story," said Conor Lastowka, a founder of National High Five Day and professional comedy writer. [2] Antecedents Antecedents of the physical gesture of slapping palms together predates 1970s (when the high five originated) for example it can be seen in the 1960 French Nouvelle vague movie Breathless . [6] However these earlier cases were never called "high fives" because the term had not yet been coined, [2] and they lack the cultural context and meaning surrounding a gesture that originated in America in the late 1970s and 1980s independent of usage elsewhere. Variations In addition to the standard high five several other types of "five" exist. The "low five" had already been known since at least the 1920s, written evidence can be found in Cab Calloway 's 1938 Hepster's Dictionary.

[7] In the 1927 film The Jazz Singer , actor Al Jolson is seen performing the low five in celebration of the news of a Broadway audition. In African-American Vernacular English ( AAVE ) this was known as "giving skin" or "slapping skin". [7] If one initiates a high five (or any variation thereof) by offering a hand(s), and no reciprocal hand appears to consummate the gesture, the initiator is said to have been " left hanging ". [8] This could be interpreted as an insult, friendly joke or form of enlightenment, depending on the context of its use. Another variation is the "self high five". The action consists of raising one hand, generally the right hand, and tagging it with the other. It was often used by Diamond Dallas Page as part of his persona, such as in his WCW theme song "Self High Five". [9] A variation of this variation was explored by Turkish artist Deniz Ozuygur who built a 'Self High-five Machine', which was exhibited in New York City in 2010.

[10] It is a robotic arm that spins in circles striking another robotic arm, both of which are rubber casts of Ozuygur's own arms. [10] "Too slow" The "too slow" variation is a sequence of high five + low five, often accompanied by a rhyme such as "Up High. Down Low.." [11] [12] then, during the down low sequence, the initiator will surprise the counter-party by pulling their hand back at the last moment, thus tricking the other person to swipe empty air, completing the rhyme "Too slow!". [13] There are variations on this theme, with additions of "at the side" and other hand positions for the partner to contact the initiator's hand. [14] The too slow variation of the high five originated sometime after the late 1970s, when the high five itself originated. Certain notable sources have made reference to it, for example in the New York Times archives, the earliest reference is from 1993 [11] when Arnold Schwarzenegger did it with the son of a film-crew member while on the set of Last Action Hero , saying: "Let's have five. Five high.

Five low," [11] at which point Arnold pulled his hand away saying "Too slow." The boy reportedly laughed. [11] Arnold also did it in the 1991 film Terminator 2: Judgment Day , when John Connor ( Edward Furlong ) teaches the terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) to "Gimme five. Up high, down low, too slow." [15] The title song for Lay on Five, a BBC children's television programme broadcast in 1985–86 featuring Floella Benjamin , similarly ended "..too slow to Lay on Five". [16] In 2008, They Might Be Giants released the song "High Five!" on an album for children titled Here Come the 123s , with lyrics "High five! Low five! Slap me five! Down low! Too slow!", a gesture described in the song as "old school" [17] a slang term usually meaning something from a prior generation. [18] "Up high." Who invented the high five? This story appeared in ESPN The Magazine's August 8, 2011, issue. Subscribe today!

PART ONE: INVISIBLE MARKS THE COURT WHEN I FIRST PHONED Lamont Sleets this spring, I knew only the following: He is a middle-aged man living in the small town of Eminence, Ky.; he played college basketball for Murray State University between 1979 and 1984; and he reportedly created one of the most contagious, transcendently ecstatic gestures in sports -- and maybe, for that matter, American life. I was calling Sleets because I wanted to talk to the man who invented the high five. I'd first read about him in 2007 in a press release from National High Five Day, a group that was trying to establish a holiday for convivial palm-slapping on the third Thursday in April. Apparently, Sleets had been reluctantly put in touch with the holiday's founders, and he explained that his father, Lamont Sleets Sr., served in Vietnam in the 1st Battalion, 5th Infantry -- a unit nicknamed The Five. The men of The Five often gathered at the Sleets home when Lamont Jr. was a toddler. They'd blow through the front door doing their signature greeting: arm straight up, five fingers spread, grunting "Five." Lamont Jr.

loved to jump up and slap his tiny palms against their larger ones. "Hi, Five!" he'd yell, unable to keep all their names straight. Years later, Sleets started high-fiving his Murray State teammates, and when the Racers played away games, other teams followed. In short, Lamont Sleets was both the inventor of the high five and its Johnny Appleseed. The low five had been a fixture of African-American culture since at least World War II. It might seem impossible to pinpoint when the low five ratcheted itself upright and evolved into the high five, but there are countless creation myths in circulation. Magic Johnson once suggested that he invented the high five at Michigan State. Others trace it to the women's volleyball circuit in the 1960s. But the Sleets story quickly shot around the Internet and into local newspapers, displacing, or at least undermining, all other claims. Sleets was budging his way atop the high-five hierarchy. When he answered my phone call, Sleets sounded tired. He was on his way to work, he said, and told me to try back at 4:30 that afternoon. So I did. But he never picked up my call again.

In the following weeks, I dialed him more than a dozen times. I pleaded in voice mails and texts. I combed local newspaper archives and funeral notices, looking in vain for someone who knew him. Gradually, the man attained an elusive, gurulike aura in my mind. "He was kind of a private person" was all his Murray State coach, Ron Greene, could tell me. (Greene said his memory is so fuzzy that he "couldn't confirm or deny" the high-five story.) Old-timers in Eminence, I was told, still point to invisible marks on the high school basketball court from where Sleets routinely sank jumpers -- spots well beyond where the three-point line has since been painted. Steve Frommeyer, Eminence High's principal, said everyone asked about the high five when the school inducted the guard into its hall of fame four years ago, but Sleets didn't show up for the ceremony. Years ago, Frommeyer added, the school retired Sleets' jersey, but it was mysteriously stolen off the gymnasium wall shortly thereafter.

In search of a definitive lead, I reached out to the founders of National High Five Day: Conor Lastowka, a comedy writer, and Greg Harrell-Edge, who was once named "Laziest Person in America" in a nationwide search by Jimmy Kimmel Live! Talking to them, I suddenly had the good sense to ask whether the Sleets story was even true. "You know," Harrell-Edge said, "you are actually the first person to ask us that." It was all a hoax, a publicity stunt. They'd concocted the whole story, then scoured college basketball rosters to plug in a name. "We just found the guy and made up a story about his dad," Lastowka said. He seemed amused that I'd gotten the actual Lamont Sleets on the phone, if only briefly. PART TWO: THE HIGH FIVE OF LIFE IF THIS PRANK HAS A VICTIM, it's Glenn Burke, a young outfielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers in the late 1970s whose astonishing physique and 17-inch biceps earned him the nickname King Kong. For at least a generation before the Sleets story surfaced, the conventional wisdom had been that Burke invented the high five on Oct.

2, 1977, in front of 46,000 screaming fans at Dodger Stadium. Lamont Sleets says the high five came from his dad, who served in the 5th Infantry. It was the last day of the regular season, and Dodgers leftfielder Dusty Baker had just gone deep off the Astros' J.R. Richard. It was Baker's 30th home run, making the Dodgers the first team in history to have four sluggers -- Baker, Ron Cey, Steve Garvey and Reggie Smith -- with at least 30 homers each. It was a wild, triumphant moment and a good omen as the Dodgers headed to the playoffs. Burke, waiting on deck, thrust his hand enthusiastically over his head to greet his friend at the plate. Baker, not knowing what to do, smacked it. "His hand was up in the air, and he was arching way back," says Baker, now 62 and managing the Reds. "So I reached up and hit his hand. It seemed like the thing to do." Burke then stepped up and launched his first major league home run. And as he returned to the dugout, Baker high-fived him.

From there, the story goes, the high five went ricocheting around the world. (According to Dodgers team historian Mark Langill, the game was not televised, and no footage survives.) The high five was a natural outgrowth of Burke's personality. The Oakland native was an irrepressibly charismatic man who, even as a 24-year-old rookie that season, had become the soul of the Dodgers' clubhouse. He did Richard Pryor standup from memory and would stuff towels under his shirt and waddle bowlegged around the dugout, imitating Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda. "He was a joyous, gregarious person," sports agent Abdul-Jalil al-Hakim says of Burke, a friend since childhood. "He could high-five you without necessarily going through the motion with his hand." Burke often high fived Dodgers teammate Dusty Baker. What most people didn't know was that Burke was gay. Following his retirement in 1980, he became the first major leaguer to come out. Even though he tried to keep his sexuality a secret during his playing days, there had been rumors in the clubhouse.

And as the 2010 television documentary Out: The Glenn Burke Story revealed, Dodgers executives scrambled to squash those rumors at all costs: In the off-season of 1977, team VP Al Campanis offered Burke $75,000 to get married. (The Dodgers executive later explained the offer not as a bribe but as a "helpful gesture" to pay for Burke's honeymoon.) According to a friend, Burke rejected the marriage deal with a mix of wit and rebelliousness. He told Campanis, "I guess you mean to a woman." It was around that time that Burke struck up a relationship with Spunky Lasorda, aka Tommy Lasorda Jr. Spunky was a lithe young socialite who frequented West Hollywood's gay scene, smoking cigarettes from a long holder. A 1992 GQ profile of Spunky portrays his homosexuality as an open secret. But his father was in staunch denial and remained so even after Spunky's death in 1991 from pneumonia. GQ reported that the death certificate said his illness was likely AIDS-related. "My son wasn't gay. No way," Lasorda Sr. told the magazine.

Burke and Spunky's relationship didn't become public until years later and remains ambiguous. Burke's sister, Lutha Davis, insists the two men were just close friends. In his 1995 memoir Out at Home, co-authored with Erik Sherman, Burke went out of his way to leave the true nature of their relationship unclear. "That's my business," he wrote. He also explained that Lasorda Sr.'s homophobia was something he and Spunky commiserated about. Burke described them turning up together at Lasorda's house one night, done up in pigtails and drag, hoping to stage a kind of gay Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. They chickened out before knocking on the door. Whatever the case, Burke's association with Spunky marks the point at which his big league career took an irrevocable left turn. Lasorda stopped being amused by the player's dugout antics and, according to Burke, once turned on him and chewed him out. "Glenn had such an abundance of respect and love for Tommy Lasorda," says Burke's sister.

"When things went bad at the end, it was almost like a father turning his back on his son." Early in the 1978 season, the Dodgers abruptly dealt Burke to the Oakland A's, among the most lackluster teams in baseball, for Billy North, an outfielder past his prime. LA sportswriters described the trade as sucking the life out of the Dodgers' clubhouse. A couple of players were seen crying at their lockers. To be fair, North was a proven player, whereas Burke wasn't yet delivering on his potential. And that's how Campanis explained the deal at the time. But for Burke, and several teammates, the trade had everything to do with his sexuality -- though the outfielder sounded off to the press about it in only the most cryptic terms. "I never got a chance here," he said. "I felt I was supposed to kiss ass and I didn't. As far as getting along with Lasorda, that didn't work out too well." After unproductive years in 1978 and '79, Burke hoped for a fresh start in 1980 under new A's manager Billy Martin. But the gay rumors followed him to Oakland.

Martin threw the word "faggot" around the clubhouse and didn't play Burke. Some teammates even avoided showering with him. Burke, accustomed to being the heart of the clubhouse, felt crippled by the discomfort he was causing. His unhappiness was compounded by a knee injury and a demotion to Triple-A. After playing just 25 games in the minors in 1980, he abruptly retired, feeling it was his only option. He was 27 years old. "It's the first thing in my life I ever backed down from," he later said. Burke started hanging around San Francisco's Castro district. He became a star shortstop in a local gay softball league and dominated in the Gay Softball World Series. "I was making money playing ball and not having any fun," he said of his time in the majors. "Now I'm not making money, but I'm having fun." Jack McGowan, a friend in the Castro who has since passed away, once said of Burke: "He was a hero to us. He was athletic, clean cut, masculine.

He was everything that we wanted to prove to the world that we could be." In the Castro, Burke's creation of the high five was part of this Herculean mystique. He would regularly sit on the hood of a car -- whichever one happened to be parked in front of a gay bar called the Pendulum Club -- flash his magnetic smile and high-five everyone who walked by. In 1982, Burke came out publicly in an Inside Sports magazine profile called "The Double Life of a Gay Dodger." The writer, a gay activist named Michael J. Smith, appropriated the high five as a defiant symbol of gay pride. Rising from the wreckage of Burke's aborted baseball career, Smith wrote, was "a legacy of two men's hands touching, high above their heads." By that time, however, Burke was struggling with a drug habit. It escalated in 1987, when a car plowed into him as he was crossing a street, breaking his right leg in four places and stealing his athleticism. He couldn't hold a job. He went broke. He did some time at San Quentin for grand theft. Then in 1993, he tested positive for HIV.

He passed away on May 30, 1995, after a sharp and grisly decline. One obituary noted that, at the end, the man who invented the high five "could barely lift his arm." As Burke's life sputtered downward, the high five madly ascended. Even by 1980, the Dodgers were selling "High Five" T-shirts with a trademarked logo of two upraised hands connecting. A promotional poster explained: "The 'High Five' salute has become the Dodgers' standard salute during the 1980 season. It is given customarily following a home run, good defensive play or Dodger victory." It wasn't just LA. The high five was being celebrated as a welcome injection of style throughout sports. In 1981, the Canadian magazine Maclean's noted that, thankfully, "when a black guy has hit a home run," the players scoring ahead of him don't just stand around anymore and "shake his hand like a bunch of Rotarians at lunch on a Tuesday." Burke's friend Abdul-Jalil al-Hakim argues: "The high five liberated everybody.

It gave you permission to enjoy your high points." And not just in sports but at your kid's spelling bee or your office after a killer PowerPoint presentation. In this interpretation, Burke didn't just add a bit of flair to baseball -- he uncorked a repressed longing for personal expression and connection in all of American society. Burke's sister, Lutha Davis, says Burke himself was pleased to see the high five spilling out of sports to punctuate smaller, everyday joys. "Now when something great happens in life, people do the high five," she says. "I call it 'the high five of life.'" Years after her brother died, Davis was watching Jeopardy! when a question about the inventor of the high five popped up. People who knew Glenn have always known "the truth," she told me, but it was gratifying to watch some anonymous, Midwestern-looking contestant buzz in right away and say, with unflappable certainty, "Who is Glenn Burke?" PART THREE: THE FOUR-FINGERED MAN BURKE DIED BELIEVING THE HIGH FIVE was his legacy, and the more I learned about him, the more tragic the Sleets hoax seemed.

It's nice to believe that something as magnificent as the high five could be invented only once, in a romantic, unforgettable flash. The truth is, such things are invented many times, by many people -- there are multiple mythologies rewritten over time. I've come to realize this because I happened upon a third, entirely credible story of the high five. It goes like this: At a University of Louisville basketball practice during the 1978-79 season, forward Wiley Brown went to give a plain old low five to his teammate Derek Smith. Out of nowhere, Smith looked Brown in the eye and said, "No. Up high." The Cardinals were known as the Doctors of Dunk. They played above the rim. So when Smith raised his hand, it clicked for Brown: He understood how the low five went against the essential, vertical character of their team. "I thought, yeah, why are we staying down low? We jump so high," says Brown, now head coach at Indiana University Southeast. Brown insists it's Smith who invented the high five and Smith who spread it around the country. In fact, high fives turn up in highlight reels of the 1978-79 Louisville team.

Occasionally, they're jerky, thrusting fives -- more like spears thrown perpendicularly at the other guy's torso -- but they're clearly among the first high fives ever broadcast into American living rooms. Midway through the second half of the 1980 NCAA Final against UCLA, Brown posted up against Kiki Vandeweghe and overpowered him, banking in a shot and drawing the foul. In footage of the game, Brown immediately rams his left arm up to slap Smith five. (Brown always made a point of high-fiving with his left hand because as a kid he had his right thumb amputated and it somehow didn't feel right to high-five with four fingers.) The announcer, Al McGuire, shouts: "Mr. Brown came to play! And they're giving him the high-five handshake. High five!" Both Derek Smith and Wiley Brown grew up in small, poor towns in southern Georgia. Smith is said to have arrived on the Louisville campus as a shy stutterer with all of his possessions in one bag. According to Brown, Smith was always blown away that someone with an undistinguished background like his could make an indelible impact on the entire world.

"He'd talk about the high five constantly," Brown says. "It was one of those things he was most proud of, right up there with getting his degree, having his kids and marrying his beautiful wife." I couldn't ask Derek Smith about his invention of the high five. After a respectable NBA career, he died suddenly in 1996 from an undiagnosed heart condition. (His son, Nolan Smith, was drafted out of Duke by the Trail Blazers in June.) But Brown told me about one particular day at Louisville, after Smith got a call about the high five from a big-city newspaper. "Derek was talking about how this was going to go down in history," Brown says. "It would be something we could tell our kids and grandkids about. I've got a smile on my face now just talking about it." I think I found the newspaper story: a tiny item in The New York Times on Sept. 1, 1980, about a burgeoning fad called the high five and the man who apparently invented it, Derek Smith. There's no mention of Glenn Burke, even though he also apparently invented the high five three years earlier.

In fact, aside from Smith and his teammates, there's only one other person mentioned in the story. The piece begins: "Manager Tom Lasorda of the Los Angeles Dodgers has joined the growing list of 'high-fivers' ... But the veteran of 35 years in baseball admits he does not know where it all began." It's just one of those things, Lasorda told the paper. "Who knows?" So here's the question: Did Lasorda purposefully not mention Glenn Burke? Or did Lasorda just forget? I don't know what to believe. (Through an assistant, Lasorda reiterated that he doesn't know who invented the high five but didn't respond to requests for an interview.) Ultimately, the story of the high five is a ghost story, about how we remember and how badly we want to be remembered. Glenn Burke walked away from baseball after four seasons with a career .237 batting average. But as he told a newspaper reporter years later: "You think about the feeling you get when you give someone the high five. I had that feeling before everybody else." Follow The Mag on Twitter @ESPNmag and like us on Facebook .

Glenn Burke | Official Site for Man Crush Monday #MCM | Woman Crush Wednesday #WCW How did you know Glenn Burke & Why do you have a crush on him? * I know Glenn Burke from... Minimum 15 Words. Rated by 50+ man-crushers 10-5-1977: Dodgers' Glenn Burke/Dusty Baker credited with MLB's 1st "high five" after Baker's Grand Slam in NLCS Gm 2. Some say 1st H5 ever. -- David K The Glenn Burke gave teammate Dusty Baker the alleged first high five in Game 2 of the 1977 NLCS. -- Hardball Hits You mean trading Glenn Burke because he was gay? Lasorda the homophobe. Watch the on the High 5. -- 1UrbanEarring Today in history: Oct 2nd, 1977. Glenn Burke, first openly gay Major League Baseball player, invents the High Five. -- WNE GSA Today in LGBT History: The first openly gay baseball player, Glenn Burke, invests the High Five following a home run by Dusty Baker....

-- BSU GLBTA Pride Ctr First documented existence of high five was in 1977 with Dusty Baker and Glenn Burke during an LA Dodgers game. -- KEEPIN' IT SLEAZY The high five was invented by Glenn Burke. A gay black man who played in Major League Baseballin the 70s. He died of AIDS. -- DC The Radiolab segment on Glenn Burke and the high five proves that straight white people truly are the worst in every way. -- Jason Glenn Burke, frequently recognized as the originator of the high five, was born on this date in 1952. -- jon rathbun "They can't ever say now that a gay man can't play in the majors, because I'm a gay man and I made it." Glenn Burke -- Dan Epstein Major League Baseball player Glenn Burke was born this day 1952 (d.

1995) -- Equality Depot LGBT Born 16th November: 1942-Barton Lidice Benes (US Artist); 1951-Paula Vogel (US Playwright); 1952-Glenn Burke (US Baseball); -- Alex Robins Glenn Burke was the first and only MLB player to come out as gay to teammates and team owners during his professional career. -- Beautiful Draculaman Glenn Burke (ex-jugador), aseguró que Tom LaSorda le hizo la vida imposible tras saber que era homosexual. -- Sergio Toledo Glenn Burke was the first openly gay player in the MLB. He played for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Oakland A's in the 1970s. -- Sporty Facts 42. Glenn Burke (RIP) -- The G-List Society Glenn Burke was the first openly gay player in the MLB. He played for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Oakland A's in the 1970s. -- OMG Facts SPORTS A gay man named Glenn Burke invented the 'high-five', now a common celebratory hand gesture! -- Whittering.com I hope more is done to honor Glenn Burke and the struggles he faced.

-- Jane Buckanaga Did you guys know the first Major League Baseball player known to be gay was Glenn Burke and he invented the high five with Dusty Baker? -- Brad S. GLENN BURKE -- andrew r. Billy Bean, MLB s inclusion ambassador, visits Mets: Sandy Alderson lives with the memory of Glenn Burke and the way he died. -- JULIO MORENO Customers would rather fly in a middle seat, or do their own taxes, than go through the car buying process. - -- Elisa Cool Sandy citing Glenn Burke as a reason why it's important to have Billy Bean around the players. -- Wayne Randazzo A gay man named Glenn Burke invented the 'high-five', now a common celebratory hand gesture! -- Ovens Wilhelmine Have u met Glenn Burke? Seems like a fascinating person. Talk about adversity, my god. -- Pandora. The high five was invented in 1977 by Dodger's player Glenn Burke -- hannah [ Politics ] Open Question : Why was Glenn Burke forgotten as the first openly gay athlete?: People went nuts about a fringe NBA player -- Zprávy Glenn Burke was the first openly gay player in the MLB.

He played for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Oakland A's in the 1970s. -- Sports Facts 1976/7 sports: Renee Richards plays, Kopay 1st NFL player out, Glenn Burke plays MLB & is most famous athlete on Earth -- Christina Kahrl I saw louis armstrong give two high fives in one minute in a documentary last night so glenn burke is full of it -- Sean Gothman I'm very interested to hear how the A's decide to memorialize Glenn Burke, who was not publicly out in MLB -- hairy styles Legendary baseball player he is credited as inventing the "high 5" in the 70's. -- FactBuffet Thank you Glenn Burke for the High Five -- Duck Great story about Glenn Burke and the origins of the high-five on today. -- Jourdan Henry Glenn Burke *high five* -- Nikki Nash Today in In 1966 Glenn Burke, philanthropist and benefactor, died in -- Clermont Sun Gay Day Fact: The first person to ever give a high five was gay! His name was Glenn Burke and he played baseball for the Dodgers!

-- MRHS GSA The Dusty Baker and Glenn Burke Dodgers home run and high five story is one of my favorites! -- ASP, Ph.D. FYI: "the first high five occurred between Dusty Baker and Glenn Burke of the Los Angeles Dodgers in Dodger Stadium on October 2, 1977." -- undertow Whoa this glenn burke high five story is wild -- simple dad Glenn Burke was the first openly gay player in the MLB. He played for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Oakland A's in the 1970s. -- Basketball! Happy birthday, Glenn Burke: Gay icon popularized the high five -- Guy Norris One of the first openly gay athletes,Dodgers outfielder Glenn Burke in the late 70s. He told his teammates, was officially outed in 1982. -- STOP-Homophobia.com Glenn Burke was the first openly gay player in the MLB. He played for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Oakland A's in the 1970s.

-- Facts In Your Face The first MLB player to publicly acknowledge his homosexuality was Glenn Burke in 1976 -- Trivia Hive Did you know that in 1976, the LA Dodgers offered openly gay baseball player Glenn Burke $75,000 to do a sham heterosexual marriage? -- Madeleine I have an entirely left handed brewing team. How very not Glenn Burke. -- Big Grove Brewery ICYMI Glenn Burke -- EAST RADIO FRESH ICYMI Glenn Burke -- FREERADIOBEATSAUDIO Language Log » The dangers of satire The dangers of satire In case you haven't already seen it, or heard it discussed anywhere, here's the cover of the 21 July New Yorker ("The Politics of Fear" by Barry Blitt): One of these things is not like the others; one of these things just doesn't belong (from Sesame Street). Question: which one? Ok, most of you got it: the gesture: the fist bump (or whatever term you use for it). The other components in the cartoon — Michelle Obama's machine gun, Barack Obama's Arab dress, the portrait of Osama bin Laden, the American flag burning in the fireplace — signify Muslim identity or terrorist allegiance or both.

But the gesture does not. (Neither does Michelle Obama's hairstyle, which I suppose is intended to be some kind of Afro. So the hairstyle is a possible alternative answer.) Some background. Satire in general is dangerous: some people don't get it, and will just assume you're presenting opinions or claims — in this case, that Barack Obama is a Muslim, and that the Obamas together are, if not actually terrorists, nevertheless disloyal Americans (as, by implication, are African-Americans in general). Even people who do get it, who do understand that the depiction intends to confront, and mock, these beliefs and claims through over-the-top exaggeration, may have their opinions altered somewhat by such depictions, in the same way that explicit denials and refutations sometimes have the paradoxical effect of increasing, by a bit, the credibility of the claim that's denied or refuted. But that's not my point here. There's been an avalanche of media and public opinion critiquing the New Yorker cover as satire, plus defenses of the cover as mockery by Danid Remnick (editor of the New Yorker) and others. I'm interested specifically in the gesture.

The gesture led off the New York Times story on how difficult it has been for comedians to skewer Obama ("Want Obama in a Punch Line? First, Find a Joke", by Bill Carter on the front page on 15 July: The New Yorker magazine tried dipping its toe into broad satire involving Senator Obama with a cover image depicting the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and his wife, Michelle, as fist-bumping, flag-burning, bin Laden-loving terrorists in the Oval Office. In the cover, the fist bump is presented along with clear signifiers of anti-Americanism, Muslim identity, and terrorism, suggesting that it is another such signifier. That's just wrong, and presenting the gesture this way is pernicious. The primary social-group signification of the gesture is, or at least was, "African-American", and it's never been associated with either Islam or terrorism, so that linking the gesture to anti-Americanism and terrorism (and, via another link, to Islam) promotes a (groundless) slur on African-Americans.

I'm sure this is not what the New Yorker intended — quite the contrary, in fact — but its depiction of several signifiers together encourages this interpretation, and so advances a slur on African-Americans as treacherous anti-Americans. Some restrictions. Yes, the whole thing is complicated, and I'll get to the complications. But before that, some restrictions on my topic. I am NOT writing here about the expressions used to refer to this gesture: fist bump, fist pound, fist thump, pound, dap, etc. (A 6 July Safire column in the New York Times Magazine also listed closed fist high five, knuckle buckle, and fist jab, and there are no doubt more.) Different speakers at different times have used different expressions, and the actual gestures referred to, and their uses in social contexts, have differed some over the years, but none of that is what's at issue here: I'm talking about how people use the gesture now and am not concerned (here) about the labels for it or their origins. Origins are not entirely irrelevant, though.

It's clear that the gesture (whatever it was called) originated among African-Americans, probably African-American men, about 30 to 40 years ago (see some ADS-L discussion here , with citations), and has since diffused considerably, though it still has associations with African-Americans. Functions of the gesture. It's also clear that the function of gesture is primarily to indicate solidarity and support. It can be used as a kind of greeting gesture, the equivalent of a handshake, but mostly it's celebratory — like a high five, but not so exuberant. It says, "I'm with you!" Until the recent flaps, I'd seen the gesture as an easier, less aggressive, variant of the buddy-slap (on one shoulder) or the buddy-punch (on one biceps [for one biceps, see below]); it's just light touching, and that's something you can do with anyone, including people of the other sex. I like that. [Morphological note: biceps is, originally, singular, with (in English) a zero plural (though bicepses is also attested): right biceps, left biceps, both biceps.

Some people have interpreted the -s as a mark of plurality and so back-formed a singular bicep. I'm not offended by that, but it's not my preferred usage. But please don't write to complain about my use of biceps as a singular.] And it has diffused. Kindergartners in the U.S. do a fair amount of high-fiving these days, but some of them also do fist bumps. The message is, of course, a bit different in the two cases. (Kindergartners do not normally shake hands with each other, by the way.) Fist bumps and machine guns. So how did the fist bump get lumped in with machine guns, the veneration of Osama bin Laden, and flag-burning? By poisonous deliberate invention, apparently. Surely it started with vile anti-Obama mutterings, but it quickly made its way into the media.

A Slate "Explainer" column , by Juliet Lapidos, tells us that After [the Obamas] greeted each other with closed fists at a campaign rally, a commenter on the right-wing Web site Human Events [27 May] described the gesture as a "Hezbollah-style fist jab." Later, Fox News host [now ex-Fox News host E. D. Hill would refer to it as a "terrorist fist jab." (Lapidos's piece goes on to briefly survey the ways in which members of various terrorist groups, from the Basque ETA to al-Qaeda to Colombia's FARC, do in fact greet each other — none of them involving fist bumps, of course.) The Human Events episode is convoluted. As far as I can determine "Hezbollah-style fist jab" was not in Cal Thomas's posting "Obama: See No Evil", but came from a commenter, "Larry" in Alpine, Texas. Somehow the expression got attributed to Thomas, so that it then appeared that Thomas had edited his posting to remove the offending material. In fact, it seems that it was the comment that was deleted. On to Hill's coverage on Fox News.

Here's the beginning of the Media Matters for America account : During the June 6 edition of Fox News' America's Pulse, host E.D. Hill teased an upcoming discussion by saying, "A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab? The gesture everyone seems to interpret differently." In the ensuing discussion with Janine Driver — whom Hill introduced as "a body language expert" — Hill referred to the "Michelle and Barack Obama fist bump or fist pound," adding that "people call it all sorts of things." Hill went on to ask Driver: "Let's start with the Barack and Michelle Obama, because that's what most people are writing about — the fist thump. Is that sort of a signal that young people get?" At no point during the discussion did Hill explain her earlier reference to "a terrorist fist jab." [Who, some of you are wondering, is this body language expert Janine Driver? Check out her website to see a portrait of a very American phenomenon, the self-invented expert engaged in relentless self-promotion.

"Comedienne, communications guru, body language expert, Lyin' Tamer" (the name is trademarked), she says, adding that Since I was barely out of diapers, I've been researching, developing, and years later, instructing courses on trends, issues, and effective techniques in detecting deception, rapport building, body language, relationships and cognitive interviewing. This is a peek into a world we've touched on a number of times here (often in connection with writers on sex differences), and I'm not going to pursue it in this posting, though it would make a good, though challenging, topic for a future posting.] Now back to the New Yorker cover. What makes it complicated is that it not only mocks sleazy slurs on the Obamas — for the most part requiring only that the viewer catches the signifiers of terrorism, Islam, and ant-Americanism — but also requires the viewer to supply a second level of interpretation to the fist bump: the understanding that what's being mocked here is not the gesture itself but the sleazy association of the gesture (in some media) with Islam and terrorism.

New Yorker covers (and the other cartoons, inside the magazine) routinely depend on the viewer's bringing rich knowledge of the culture and current events to bear on their interpretation. (I've spent no small amount of time explaining New Yorker cartoons to people who lack some of this background knowledge.) Usually, if you don't have that knowledge, you're just baffled — but sometimes you'll try to infer some of this information. That means that unless you're right on top of the sleazy media treatments of fist bumps and also have some prior knowledge of who uses the gesture and for what purposes, you might understand it as just another signifier of Islam, terrorism, or ant-Americanism. That's what so dismayed me about the cover. It had such a good chance of feeding into a vicious slur. Satire is dangerous in general, but this bit of it seemed even more dangerous to me than usual. Meanwhile, back on Language Log, terrorist fist jab appeared in a posting by Eric Bakovic. In quotation marks. Eric's intention was clearly (to me, at any rate) to mock E. D. Hill's use of the expression.

But quotation marks are perilous: they do many kinds of work, including simple quotation (which would, in this case, indicate that the expression was in fact the name of the gesture, and implicate that the gesture is associated with terrorism). Eric's intended use was a species of "sneer quotation", but if you didn't know the history of the term (and missed Mark Liberman's posting "Terrorist hand signs at home plate?"), you could easily miss the sneer and infer that the gesture was in fact a terrorist one. At the time, I thought that Eric's posting was ok — mocking should absolutely not be over the line — though I winced a bit in worry. Then Ryan Rosso made a follow-up comment to Eric's posting that used the expression, three times, without quotation marks, to convey congratulations: Wow Eric, I need to give you terrorist fist jabs for all the great things you just mentioned in this post: -My name -The Ali G – Noam Chomsky interview -Terrorist fist jabs! That's five terrorist fist jabs! Good work.

Yes, it was joking, but it seemed to me to be really perilous (not unlike using feminazis as a reference to feminists, intending to mock Rush Limbaugh's use of the word, but risking putting the word into more general circulation). At that point, I wrote Eric, expressing my fears that such uses of the expression might just reproduce nasty (and false) claims about African-Americans. Eric (who is a very nice man) offered to write a public apology, but then the New Yorker cover appeared, and I thought it was time to do something more extensive. It's taken a while, but here it is.

Question: What common celebratory gesture was invented by American athletes in the late 1970's?
Answer: High Five