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Jared Diamond had a nice article on this phenomenon last week.
PITTSBURGH—In recent days, the Mets have taken to twirling towels over their heads in the dugout whenever one of their teammates gets a hit. That's how valuable every hit is for the Mets.
Outfielder Curtis Granderson started the celebratory custom, inspired by his days as a child in the early 1990s watching the Chicago Bulls wave towels from the bench. It quickly caught on, and now the entire team does it—even the relief pitchers in the bullpen.
"I guess every team needs some sort of gimmick now," team captain David Wright said. "I guess that's ours."
There is just one problem: The towels are white. So now, whenever something good happens, it looks like the Mets are waving a white flag, an internationally recognized sign of surrender.
Considering the Mets' place in the standings (battling for last with the Phillies) and their struggles to generate offense (they entered Friday 27th in the major leagues with a .238 team batting average), this ritualistic admission of defeat in the early innings might be a good way to speed up their impending misery. But even a squad as disappointing as the Mets wants to at least give the illusion of trying to put up a fight.
Asked about the Mets' unorthodox and unintentionally pitiful choice of iconography, Wright insisted that the irony of the situation isn't lost on him. He had his doubts about using the white towels, but managed to reconcile them when he noticed that they are adorned with Gatorade logos. So "they're not exactly white."
"Actually I thought about it, I looked at it, and I was like, 'Yeah, you know, white towels, I'm not sure,'" Wright said. "But there's some color to it, so…"
Backup catcher Anthony Recker rejected that rationale and offered a different, even more curious explanation, instead.
"It's a metaphor," he said. "We're scoring runs, and now the other team should be waving the towel. We're saying, 'Hey, you guys need to wave the towel.'"
Either way, the Mets seem content to go ahead with this as their unofficial rallying cry. And maybe that's OK.
Dave Martucci is the former president the North American Vexillological Association, one of the world's largest groups dedicated to vexillology—the study of flags. In a telephone interview this week, he said the Mets shouldn't worry too much, since the white flag has only been used as a formal sign of surrender for about 300 years, a blip in human history.
"The white flag is a long-standing thing," he said. "But not as long as some people think."
From the late 1600s into the middle 1700s, the French military used white flags in its conflict with the British in North America. When the British army prevailed, Martucci said, its soldiers "began a campaign to honor a white flag brought to their lines as a symbol of holding their fire."
"It was sort of basically a British insult to the French," he said.
From there the tradition stuck, although Martucci emphasized that the white flag doesn't necessary represent surrender. More accurately, it means that one side wants to parley, or hold a discussion that could ultimately lead to a truce. To this day, the white flag continues to hold that connotation.
Still, not the best message to send from the dugout.
"If you showed up with a group of people with a white flag, in theory the other side should stop shooting at you," Martucci said. "I guess it depends on who you're up against."
There is some good news for the Mets, however. White towels might have a negative association, but as infielder Eric Campbell explained, "we don't see it that way."
Nor should they. Scot Guenter, a professor of American studies and a vexillologist at San Jose State University, said the Mets "don't see it as funny, as the meaning is contextual." Because the Mets wave the towels so aggressively, he said, they are clearly not surrendering.
More important, Mets fans have come to recognize the white towels as a rallying symbol. Granderson, for instance, said that fans have started asking him to toss towels into the stands so they can wave them, too.
"The dugout is the sacred place," Guenter said. "If someone's getting the white flag that was passed from where the players themselves are sitting, and the players are their heroes, then it means something,"
Still, it probably wouldn't hurt the Mets to consider rethinking the white towels and going with a blue or an orange set. Martucci said that "would be a lot better. It would make more sense."
So if this keeps up, don't be surprised to see some colorful rally towels on sale at Citi Field in the near future. On the other hand, the Mets rank near the bottom of the major leagues in hits, so why bother. |
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