The History of the “Air Ball” Chant, the Greatest Taunt in Sports – Slate Magazine

Posted: Tuesday, March 15, 2016

This is a beautiful, miraculous thing. In a 1995 paper titled “Air Ball: Spontaneous Large-Group Precision Chanting,” an English professor named Cherrill P. Heaton wrote that “without direction, instruction, a conductor or a pitch pipe, thousands of strangers, massed in indoor stadiums and arenas, are able, if stimulated by an air ball, to chant, ‘Air ball,’ in total and rhythmic unison.” An Associated Press story on the phenomenon noted that the professor’s “research has provided no clues about how or why this interesting sporting phenomenon takes place.”

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