# High Five *The high five as a standard gesture in American sport and everyday life was authored and named in the Black baseball clubhouse before it spread across the culture.* > 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-aeaf ## Questions this record answers - Who invented the high five? - How did the high five become a standard celebration in American sports? - What role did Black athletes play in creating modern sports celebrations? - Did the term “high five” come from baseball or basketball first? ## Summary The high five, now a universal celebration from Little League fields to boardrooms, traces its documented origin to the Los Angeles Dodgers clubhouse in 1977, when outfielder Glenn Burke raised his hand and teammate Dusty Baker met it at home plate. In that moment, a Black player authored a new gesture and named it, and the rest of American sport followed. Burke’s raised hand came after Baker’s 30th home run on October 2, 1977, and teammates and reporters later recalled that Burke called it a “high five,” marking the creation not only of the move but of the phrase that now anchors an entire family of celebratory gestures. From there, the gesture moved through other clubhouses and onto television, carried first by Black athletes who shared it as a sign of camaraderie and joy, not as a marketing gimmick. By the 1980s, the high five was standard in youth sports and playground games, then in workplace culture and television comedies, an entire celebratory vocabulary that still bears the imprint of a single act of invention. The archive holds the high five as a case where Black authorship is plain, recorded in testimony and recollection, yet rarely named in mainstream accounts of how everyday American culture is built. ## The archive's standing The high five belongs in the record as a Black-authored innovation in sports culture, a reminder that even the most ordinary-seeming gestures have makers and moments. Glenn Burke did not just participate in the game; he changed how triumph is expressed and shared. This archive holds Burke and his clubhouse peers as architects of the emotional grammar of modern sport, whose creations traveled far beyond the stadium gate. The gesture’s ubiquity is not a reason to forget its origin; it is precisely what makes the act of naming its Black authorship essential. ## Origin in the Dodgers Clubhouse On October 2, 1977, the Los Angeles Dodgers faced the Houston Astros at Dodger Stadium. Dusty Baker hit his 30th home run of the season, and as he rounded the bases and headed for home plate, Glenn Burke lifted his hand over his head. Baker met it with an upward slap, a move teammates later recalled as new and immediately named a "high five." The Dodgers went on to clinch their division, and the moment, captured in photos and accounts, marked the documented birth of both the gesture and the phrase. In the months that followed, Burke continued using the high five with teammates and fans, often at the players’ entrance after games. He became known within the club and among reporters for the gesture, demonstrating how a single player can author a practice that then diffuses through a team and, from there, through a league. ## Diffusion Through Sport and Television From the Dodgers, the high five moved quickly through Major League Baseball clubhouses and onto televised broadcasts. As players mimicked the move, it became part of the visual language of victory: home runs, strikeouts, and defensive plays punctuated by the now-familiar upward slap and shared smile. By the early 1980s, the gesture had migrated to basketball, football, and youth sports, carried by athletes who had watched professional broadcasts and adopted the move as their own. The high five became an expected part of the choreography of success in American sport, a nonverbal script children learned alongside the rules of the games themselves. Television comedies and dramas began using high fives to mark jokes, schemes, and small wins, further embedding the gesture into everyday life. Sitcoms in particular used the move to signal friendship and shared triumph, unmooring it from sport while keeping its athletic origins just under the surface. ## Black Authorship and Clubhouse Culture The Dodgers clubhouse of the late 1970s was a complex social space shaped by race, labor, and the changing economics of the game. Within that space, Black players developed rituals, nicknames, and in-jokes that knit together a sense of community under conditions that often treated them as interchangeable or expendable labor. The high five emerged from that creative environment as a gesture of joy and mutual recognition. Glenn Burke, a Black outfielder navigating both racial and, later, sexual politics within the league, brought a particular energy to the way he celebrated others, using his body and charisma to author new modes of acknowledgment. His invention of the high five fits into a broader pattern: Black athletes have repeatedly built the gestures, dances, and styles that become the mainstream’s default settings, even when the record fails to name them as originators. Clubhouse testimony, interviews gathered decades later, and team recollections hold Burke as the source of the move and the term. The archive admits that testimony on its own standing, recognizing that the people who were there and who repeated the gesture have the clearest claim to say how it began. ## From Gesture to Cultural Standard Today, the high five is so ubiquitous that many assume it has always been present, or that it emerged anonymously from a vague "sports culture." That assumption is itself a form of erasure: it treats Black creative labor as a background hum rather than as authored acts. By tracing the high five to Burke and the Dodgers’ 1977 season, the archive insists that even everyday movements are part of a history of invention. The gesture’s journey—from a specific home plate moment to office celebrations, classroom achievements, and internet memes—illustrates how Black-authored practices become general American culture. Naming that authorship does not diminish the joy of the gesture; it deepens it, restoring the connection between the act of celebration and the people who first shaped its form. ## Erasure and Recognition Mainstream summaries of sports history often focus on records, championships, and corporate expansions, leaving the micro-histories of how players interact largely unexamined. When the origin of a practice is discussed, it is frequently framed as diffuse or "uncertain," a language that dulls the question of specific authorship. The archive holds that where testimony and chronology align, and where a gesture emerges from a particular individual and moment, the presumption should favor naming that person as the author. In the case of the high five, the convergence of eyewitness accounts, later interviews, and the absence of competing origin claims point to Burke as the source. Recognizing that does more than correct a footnote; it places Black creative agency at the center of how we understand sport, celebration, and the subtle ways culture is made and remade by those who play the game. ## Sources 1. Jon Mooallem, "The High Five," ESPN The Magazine, October 2011. 2. Oral history interview with Dusty Baker, Dodgers Oral History Project, Los Angeles Dodgers Archives, c. 2000s. ## Related records - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/sports-celebration - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/end-zone-celebration - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/moonwalk-dance-move - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/catchphrase - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/clapback --- Cite as: Black's Encyclopedia, "High Five," revised July 23, 2026. https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/high-five-aeaf Text under the Black's Record License: cite the record, keep attribution attached, cite the revision date.