{"id":237051,"date":"2026-04-27T19:07:47","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T19:07:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/27\/someone-had-to-invent-the-high-five-heres-the-disputed-story-of-how-it-happened\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T19:07:47","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T19:07:47","slug":"someone-had-to-invent-the-high-five-heres-the-disputed-story-of-how-it-happened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/27\/someone-had-to-invent-the-high-five-heres-the-disputed-story-of-how-it-happened\/","title":{"rendered":"Someone Had to Invent the High Five \u2014 Here\u2019s the Disputed Story of How It Happened"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve done it a thousand times without ever thinking about where it came from. After a home run, a good meeting or just greeting a 3-year-old \u2014 you raise your hand and wait for the slap. The high five feels like it\u2019s been around forever.<\/span><\/p>\n

It hasn\u2019t. The gesture actually has a traceable \u2014 and hotly disputed \u2014 origin story.<\/span><\/p>\n

The high five is one of sports\u2019 most iconic gestures, but its exact origin is still debated. The cast of characters fighting over credit for a simple hand slap is unexpectedly rich \u2014 spanning a Dodgers outfielder, a college basketball player and even a 2019 episode of \u201cAmerican Dad.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Multiple competing stories have emerged over time \u2014 some documented, others later disputed or even fabricated.<\/span><\/p>\n

The 1977 Dodgers Moment Most People Know<\/b><\/h2>\n

The most widely accepted origin story, <\/span>according to Britannica<\/span><\/a>, traces the high five to Oct. 2, 1977. That\u2019s the day Los Angeles Dodgers left fielder Dusty Baker hit his 30th home run of the season. As Baker rounded the bases and crossed home plate, his teammate Glenn Burke was waiting for him \u2014 hand raised high in the air.<\/span><\/p>\n

Baker didn\u2019t overthink it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHis hand was up in the air, and he was arching way back,\u201d Baker told <\/span>ESPN<\/span><\/a> in 2020. \u201cSo I reached up and hit his hand. It seemed like the thing to do.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And just like that \u2014 maybe \u2014 the high five was born.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the catch: the interaction was not televised. There\u2019s no video evidence to settle the debate once and for all. But it\u2019s the origin story that stuck, and Burke is widely credited with helping popularize the gesture in professional sports.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Competing Origin Theories<\/b><\/h2>\n

Here\u2019s where it gets messy. Despite the popular MLB story, historians and cultural references point to earlier or alternative origins.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some accounts suggest the high five may have existed as a gesture among U.S. military personnel stationed in Japan after World War II. Others note visual similarities in earlier media, including a scene in Jean-Luc Godard\u2019s 1960 film \u201cBreathless\u201d where characters appear to perform a similar gesture.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another theory ties the gesture to African American Vernacular English, specifically the phrase \u201cgimme five,\u201d suggesting the physical motion evolved from existing cultural expressions. In this reading, the raised hand was an evolution of something already in practice \u2014 not an out-of-nowhere invention.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Basketball Version with the Perfect Quote<\/b><\/h2>\n

In basketball lore, the University of Louisville has its own rival claim \u2014 and it comes with the kind of quotable moment that practically begs to be retold.<\/span><\/p>\n

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, \u201cNo. Up high.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Cardinals were known as the Doctors of Dunk. They played above the rim. Everything about their game was vertical. 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI thought, yeah, why are we staying down low? We jump so high,\u201d Brown told ESPN. Brown insists it\u2019s Smith who invented the high five and Smith who spread it around the country.<\/span><\/p>\n

So Who Really Invented the High Five?<\/b><\/h2>\n

The honest answer: nobody knows for sure. The Baker-Burke story from 1977 is the version most people cite. The Brown-Smith exchange at Louisville has its own passionate defenders. And the theories about military origins and cultural evolution suggest the gesture might not have had a single inventor at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, while the exact origin remains contested, the high five endures as a universal symbol of celebration \u2014 widely used in sports, pop culture and everyday life. The fact that nobody can definitively prove who started it only makes the whole story better.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now you\u2019ve got the retellable details: Baker\u2019s casual \u201cIt seemed like the thing to do.\u201d Smith\u2019s blunt \u201cNo. Up high.\u201d And a surprisingly deep debate behind the world\u2019s simplest gesture of celebration.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You\u2019ve done it a thousand times without ever thinking about where it came from. After a home run, a good meeting or just greeting a 3-year-old \u2014 you raise your hand and wait for the slap. The high five feels like it\u2019s been around forever. It hasn\u2019t. The gesture actually has a traceable \u2014 and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":237052,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-237051","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-lifestyle"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}