# High Five *A Black-origin celebratory gesture, born from a specific moment between Black athletes in 1977, that entered global popular culture while its creators were largely stripped from the story.* > Black's Encyclopedia — the sourced record of Black American life. > Portal: Sports & Athletics · Status: In review · Revised: July 23, 2026 · Revisions: 1 > Canonical: https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/high-five-430f ## Questions this record answers - Where did the high five really come from? - Did Black athletes invent the high five? - Who were Dusty Baker and Glenn Burke and what did they build in baseball culture? - How did the high five spread from Black sports to global popular culture? ## Summary The modern **high five** as a named, repeatable celebratory gesture traces to a single exchange between Los Angeles Dodgers teammates Glenn Burke and Dusty Baker at Dodger Stadium on October 2, 1977, when Burke raised his hand and Baker slapped it after hitting his 30th home run of the season. From that moment, the gesture became a ritual on the Dodgers, then in baseball, and then across American and global culture, yet the Black authors of that act were long omitted from the dominant telling of sports history. ## Origins in Black Baseball Culture The high five’s origin story is unusually precise: in the last game of the 1977 regular season, Dusty Baker hit his 30th home run, making the Dodgers the first team with four players to reach 30 homers. As Baker approached home plate, Glenn Burke lifted his hand above his head and Baker slapped it, creating a gesture the team and media would soon recognize and repeat. Burke, a Black outfielder from Oakland, and Baker, a Black outfielder from Riverside, were already culture-setters in the Dodgers clubhouse, known for spirit, humor and connection. Burke quickly began using the high five as his signature, greeting teammates with the raised hand and teaching the move to children in Los Angeles and Oakland. This is not a diffuse, anonymous folk evolution; it is an authored gesture, with clear witnesses and early press notice. ## Codification and Diffusion Within the Dodgers, the high five became part of the team’s visual identity in the late 1970s. Television cameras caught the gesture, sportswriters described it, and other clubs began to imitate what they saw the Dodgers doing. As the ritual spread in Major League Baseball, it joined a broader Black-led transformation of sports celebration—end zone dances, chest bumps, choreographed handshakes—that treated the game as a stage for joy, creativity and mutual recognition. By the early 1980s, the high five had migrated into college sports, playground basketball, and youth leagues. From there it entered school hallways, workplaces and television culture as a general symbol of shared success. The specific history—that two Black players in a segregated-by-custom league had authored the gesture—was rarely named, even as the move became a universal shorthand for triumph. ## Erasure, Identity and the Official Record Glenn Burke’s story reveals how identity shapes whose authorship is remembered. Burke was not only Black but also one of the first openly gay players in Major League Baseball—a fact that made him vulnerable to pressure and marginalization. As Burke clashed with Dodgers management over his openness and later faced hostility in Oakland, his playing career was cut short and his name faded from the sport’s mainstream narrative. Dusty Baker, by contrast, went on to a long managerial career and eventually told the story of the first high five to journalists and memoirists. Even then, the dominant encyclopedic record often treated the high five as a gesture that “emerged” in the late 1970s, without naming Burke as its inventor or Baker as its co-author. The archive holds that omission as part of a broader pattern in which Black and queer creators build the rituals of American life while their names are removed from the credits. ## Legacy in Sports and Shared Culture Today the high five is so ubiquitous it feels timeless, but it is in fact a modern invention born from a specific moment of Black authorship. Every time it is used—on Little League diamonds, in office corridors, on television game shows—it carries the imprint of Burke and Baker’s choice to mark achievement with contact, joy and mutual acknowledgment. The gesture’s endurance is itself a measure of its power: simple, repeatable, and emotionally direct. The archive holds the high five as part of a continuum of Black creative innovation in sports, alongside call-and-response cheering, custom handshakes and dance-inflected celebrations. Restoring Glenn Burke and Dusty Baker to the front of this story does not invent credit; it restores it to the people whose hands made the gesture real. ## The archive's standing The archive holds the high five as a canonical example of Black authorship inside everyday global culture: a small act that remade how people mark success and solidarity. Glenn Burke and Dusty Baker did not merely participate in baseball; they authored one of its most enduring rituals, which then escaped the ballpark and entered human habit. We place the high five alongside other Black-origin forms that the dominant record treats as anonymous—proof that Black creativity sits at the foundation of the “ordinary” gestures of modern life. Burke’s early sidelining and Baker’s later fame are read here as evidence of how identity and power shape which origin stories survive, not as a reason to doubt their invention. ## Sources 1. Erik Malinowski, "The High Five," ESPN The Magazine, October 2011. 2. Andrew Maraniss, "Singled Out: The True Story of Glenn Burke," Philomel Books (Penguin Random House), 2021. ## Related records - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/end-zone-celebration - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/moonwalk-dance-move - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/electric-slide - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/clapback - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/sitcom-laugh-track --- Cite as: Black's Encyclopedia, "High Five," revised July 23, 2026. https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/high-five-430f Text under the Black's Record License: cite the record, keep attribution attached, cite the revision date.