FAYETTEVILLE — When it comes to baseball games, I’ve had enough of the woo.
No, not the Woo that comes before Pig Sooie, but the one that people just shout out of the blue.
There’s not been one professional, college or high school game I’ve been to, watched or listened to this season — and that’s a lot — where the woo hasn’t made an appearance.
For the love of Ric Flair, it’s time for this to end.
I mean it’s not yet up to the annoying level of The Wave, which somehow is still a thing, but it is getting there.
There’s even a Stop the Woo website, which asks fans to respect the game, respect the players, respect the fans and respect yourself.
There’s no doubt that there will be some wooing when SEC West-leading and No. 6 Arkansas (33-15, 14-10) hosts unranked Texas A&M (34-14, 12-12) this weekend. The important three-game set begins Friday night at 6 p.m.
With great weather and the importance of the games, there should be large crowds for all three games and I’m afraid lots of wooing.
I love the passion of fans and don’t want them to be quiet.
Give me the woo followed by pig sooie, the bases loaded beer hats, some razzing of the other team, the antics of Hognoxious and his crew and any other cheer, but let’s lose the woo.
I don’t blame the Memphis-born “The Nature Boy” — whose real name is Richard Morgan Fliehr and who has always been one of my favorite wrestling icons.
He remains someone I enjoy seeing these days now that he has become popular among NFL players and rappers.
One of the members of the highly successful rap trio Migos even has a song about him called the Ric Flair Drip. Migos performed recently inside the ring with the 69-year-old legend on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
I’m sure that part of the love for Flair was that I also thought a lot of myself back in the day, loved his swagger and the life that he supposedly lived as one of the stars of wrasslin, something now dubbed sports entertainment.
I mean who wouldn’t love a “Rolex wearing, diamond ring wearing, wheeling dealing, kiss stealing, limousine riding, jet flying, son of a gun?”
One can even remember coming up with something on my own — “hard-hitting, chain wearing, T-Top Z 28 Camaro-riding, hair flowing, kiss stealing, 160 pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal son of a gun.”
Flair, 68-year-old Jerry Lawler and 74-year-old Bill Dundee (real name William Cruickshanks) — three of my childhood favorites — will be at the Hot Springs Convention Center on Saturday, May 19, to headline CWA Wrestle Raise V Spa City Slam.
I’m considering heading there to check it out just for old times’ sake. I spent many a night in Memphis and Jonesboro watching matches, which I found to be just an escape from reality.
I’m sure they will be some wooing that night, but that’s the proper place. That would also be appropriate when listening to Jeffrey Osborne’s song “You Should Be Mine (The Woo Woo Song).”
I also know that I am probably fighting a losing battle, something Pittsburgh manager Clint Hurdle pointed out after a recent bout of wooing at one of his team’s games against the St. Louis Cardinals.
“What usually happens when you tell your kids you don’t really like something that they do, what do they usually do?” Hurdle said. “They usually do the opposite, so that’s what I got for you on the ‘woo, woo’ thing.”