And why don’t they do more of it at the World Cup?
Yankees pitcher Randy Johnson was razzed on his home turf on Tuesday night as the team fumbled toward an embarrassing 14-3 loss to the Red Sox. The Yankee Stadium crowd booed Johnson as he left the game in the fourth inning. Where does booing come from?
The first written record comes from ancient Greece. At the annual Festival of Dionysia in Athens, playwrights competed to determine whose tragedy was the best. When the democratic reformer Cleisthenes came to power in the sixth century B.C., audience participation came to be regarded as a civic duty. The audience applauded to show its approval and shouted and whistled to show displeasure.
In ancient Rome, jeering was common at the gladiatorial games, where audience participation often determined whether a competitor lived or died. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the Latin verb explodere means “to drive out by clapping, hiss (a player) off the stage.”
http://www.slate.com/id/2141597/
