Who Really Invented the High Five? A Dodgers Dugout and a Louisville Gym Both Claim It
You think you know the origin of the high five. Everybody does. It was Dusty Baker and Glenn Burke, Dodger Stadium, 1977. Case closed.
Except it isn’t — not even close. The story behind sports’ most universal gesture is a genuine historical mystery with at least two credible origin claims, a handful of murkier ones and no definitive answer. What makes it irresistible: the people involved remember it vividly, and they disagree completely.
The Dodger Stadium Moment
The most widely accepted account, according to Britannica, traces the high five to Oct. 2, 1977. Los Angeles Dodgers left fielder Dusty Baker had just crushed his 30th home run of the season. As Baker crossed home plate, teammate Glenn Burke was waiting for him — but not with a handshake or a fist bump. Burke’s hand was raised high above his head.
Baker didn’t think twice. He slapped it.
“His hand was up in the air, and he was arching way back,” Baker told ESPN in 2020. “So I reached up and hit his hand. It seemed like the thing to do.”
That quote has anchored this origin story for decades. No grand plan. No choreography. Just two teammates and a split-second decision that became the most recognizable celebratory gesture in sports. The moment was not televised, which means nobody can go back and watch the tape. What we have is the word of the men who were there.
The Man Behind the Raised Hand
Burke’s role in the story carries weight that goes far beyond baseball. He played during a time when being openly gay in professional sports carried major stigma. After his time with the Dodgers and a brief stint with the Oakland Athletics organization, Burke’s baseball career ended in the minors in 1980. He came out publicly in 1982.
His life after baseball was marked by hardship. Burke died in 1995 from AIDS-related complications. The gesture he helped create — spontaneous, joyful, uncomplicated — outlived him and became something he never could have predicted.
The Baker-Burke connection has also entered pop culture. In a 2019 episode of American Dad, a storyline humorously depicts a character claiming to have invented the high five before Dusty Baker is shown taking credit, turning the historical debate into satire.
The Louisville Counter-Claim
Here’s where the story gets genuinely interesting for anyone who loves a disputed first. The Dodgers have the most famous version — but the University of Louisville has its own, and the people involved are just as certain.
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, “No. Up high.”
That detail — the direct eye contact, the two-word command — gives the Louisville claim a specificity that feels impossible to fabricate. And Brown had a theory for why it clicked immediately. The Cardinals were known as the Doctors of Dunk. They played above the rim. So when Smith raised his hand, it made perfect sense to Brown.
“I thought, yeah, why are we staying down low? We jump so high,” Brown told ESPN.
Brown insists it’s Smith who invented the high five and Smith who spread it around the country. The Louisville timeline puts their claim roughly a year after the Baker-Burke moment, but Brown and Smith weren’t telling their story as a response to what happened at Dodger Stadium. In their version, the gesture was born independently — out of the vertical identity of their team. A low five simply didn’t match who the Doctors of Dunk were.
Earlier Threads No One Can Prove
The Dodgers and Louisville aren’t even the only contenders. 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’s 1960 film “Breathless” where characters appear to perform a similar gesture.
Another theory ties the gesture to African American Vernacular English, specifically the phrase “gimme five,” suggesting the physical motion evolved from existing cultural expressions that predated both the Baker-Burke and Louisville stories.
A Mystery That Stays Open
None of these claims has been definitively proven or disproven. The Baker-Burke moment at Dodger Stadium remains the most widely cited, but the Louisville claim carries real weight — and the cultural threads running through military history and Black American vernacular suggest the gesture may not have had a single inventor at all.
What makes this a great piece of sports history isn’t the answer. It’s the fact that multiple credible people remember the exact moment they believe it started, and each story is vivid, specific and entirely their own.
Today, the high five endures as a universal symbol of celebration, widely used in sports, pop culture and everyday life. Who invented it? Depends on who you ask — and honestly, that might be the best part.
This article was created by content specialists using various tools, including AI.
