The Texas Rangers baseball team posted signs warning that children doing the Mexican wave will be sold to the circus. Photograph: Action Images/Reuters

For a quarter of a century it’s been a staple ingredient of any well-attended sporting fixture, bringing fans to their feet during everything from World Cup finals to rain delays at Wimbledon.

Now a professional baseball team in the US wants to bid farewell to the ubiquitous Mexican wave.

The problem, the Texas Rangers insist, is not that thousands of spectators suddenly leap from their seats, throwing their arms into the air and often showering those around them with a hailstorm of peanut shells and beer.

It’s just that they’re doing it at the wrong time.

The Rangers players are concerned that waves often start at crucial moments in a game, which can distract them, officials say.

“I don’t know if there is a right time for some people,” Chuck Morgan, the club’s announcer, told the Fox Sports Southwest TV station. “The feedback I hear from players is that if it’s a blowout game, they can wave all they want. Just do it at a different time.”

Morgan plays video messages during games and has posted signs around the ballpark in Arlington asking fans to restrain themselves.

“Any children doing the wave will be sold to the circus,” the signs warn, adding that waves should be restricted to “football games and Miley Cyrus concerts”.

The Rangers have no plans to employ wave police and Morgan admits the club is “having a little fun with it”.

But behind the humour lies a serious push from some fans to eliminate Mexican waves, so named because they came to prominence during the 1986 football World Cup there.

A website, stopthewave.net, has been campaigning for two years to bring the practice at baseball fields to an end, selling T-shirts to raise funds, and the anti-wave movement has also enjoyed success elsewhere in the world.

In 2007, Cricket Australia (CA) announced it was employing plainclothes officers to identify and eject supporters breaching a ban on Mexican waves at all the country’s grounds. James Sutherland, CA’s chief executive, said at the time that waves made it “dangerous and uncomfortable” for other spectators.

There have been no similar attempts to outlaw the wave in the UK, although there have been grumblings from members at Lord’s who are routinely heckled when they refuse to join in the wave at cricket matches .

ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) – The Texas Rangers placed left-hander
Arthur Rhodes on release waivers on Monday.

He becomes a free agent on Wednesday, when he would be eligible to sign with another club.

Texas designated the 41-year-old Rhodes for assignment on Aug. 2 to create a roster spot for right-hander Mike Adams, who had been
acquired in a trade with San Diego.

Rhodes went 3-3 with a 4.81 ERA in 32 relief appearances for
Texas this season.

The 20-year veteran has 881 career appearances, trailing only
the Yankees’ Mariano Rivera (1,023).

DETROIT — The Texas Rangers announced Tuesday night that outfielder Josh Hamilton is headed to the disabled list after fracturing his upper right arm while trying to score from third on a popup that didn’t leave the infield. He is expected to miss six to eight weeks.

Hamilton suffered the injury while sliding headfirst into home in the first inning of the Rangers’ 5-4 loss to the Tigers on Tuesday. Preliminary X-rays of Hamilton’s shoulder showed no separation or dislocation, but the slugger also had an MRI, which revealed the fracture of his humerus bone. He isn’t expected to swing a bat for a month.

“

It was just a stupid play. I definitely shouldn’t have done it.

” – Rangers outfielder Josh Hamilton

Hamilton, who was wearing a sling after the game, said third base coach Dave Anderson sent him home when he noticed the pitcher wasn’t covering home plate on a pop up by Adrian Beltre in foul territory just in front of the Tigers’ dugout. Hamilton was not happy with the decision, calling it “stupid.”

“It was just a stupid play,” Hamilton said after the game. “I definitely shouldn’t have done it.”

Hamilton added: “I listened to my third base coach. That’s a little too aggressive. The whole time I was watching the play I was listening. [He said], ‘Nobody’s at home, nobody’s at home.’ I was like, ‘Dude, I don’t want to do this. Something’s going to happen.’ But I listened to my coach. And how do you avoid a tag the best, by going in headfirst and get out of the way and get in there. That’s what I did.”

Anderson said the club tries to take advantage of every opportunity they can to be aggressive and try to score a run.

“There was nobody covering home plate, so we tried to steal a run there,” Anderson said. “He made a pretty good play. That’s a tough play for a catcher running away and shovel pass and try to tag a guy. There was an opportunity with two outs and we tried to take advantage of it.”

Anderson said just after the game that he hadn’t had a chance to talk the play over with Hamilton because the slugger was getting tests done. But Anderson said it was a play he would have tried with any of the club’s speed guys, like Hamilton.

“You go to home plate and see what happens,” Anderson said. “He can run, so you take a chance.”

Anderson said he would have preferred Hamilton slide feet first on the play.

“I always want him to slide feet first no matter what he does,” Anderson said. “You play this game long enough and I’ve gone through it too, sliding headfirst, and have had some injuries. Sometimes you can’t help it, your instinct just tells you to dive and try to get there. But most of the time you try to go feet first if you can to try to stay away from injuries.”

Hamilton said he heard two pops in his shoulder when he dived into home.

“I’m a little worried,” he said before the team announced his fate.

The play came after Hamilton hit a triple in the first inning and was on third with Beltre up and one out. After Hamilton was tagged out at the plate, he walked to the dugout with his arm behind his back. He then tried to take some swings and said he could swing, but when he stopped his swing he felt a lot of pain.

“He just came up and told me he couldn’t go and that was it,” manager Ron Washington said.

Ian Kinsler took Hamilton’s place as the designated hitter for the rest of the game.

Chris Davis will be called up from Triple-A Round Rock to take Hamilton’s roster spot.

Hamilton has had injury issues during his career. He missed most of last September after hitting a wall at Target Field in Minnesota and cracking a few ribs. He was healthy in time for the postseason and was the ALCS MVP in the club’s six-game win over the Yankees.

Richard Durrett covers the Rangers for ESPNDallas.com.

Follow Richard Durrett on Twitter: @espn_durrett

ARLINGTON, Texas — Pitcher C.J. Wilson said Tuesday that the Texas Rangers made him a long-term contract offer a few weeks ago, but that it’s too late in the process to get anything done before Opening Day.

“They did eventually make an offer,” Wilson said during an appearance on the Ben & Skin Show on ESPN 103.3 FM in Dallas. “But it didn’t really make any sense for me to bite at the first offer. I was like, ‘Well, maybe if you guys would have made that offer in January we would have had time to work it out.’ It will take a little longer than two or three days or a week.”

Wilson has said this spring that he doesn’t want any contract talks distracting from his preparation and the team’s goals this season. But he added Tuesday that it doesn’t mean his agent might not talk with the team at some point. Rangers assistant general manager Thad Levine said the club doesn’t want to distract from anything, either, but is open to talking with Wilson’s agent during the season.

Wilson, who is making $7 million in 2011 just one season removed from joining the starting rotation, will be a free agent at the end of the season. Wilson was 15-8 with a 3.35 ERA in 33 starts (204 innings) in 2011. He had 170 strikeouts and 93 walks and heads into 2011 as the No. 1 starter on the staff. He’ll toe the rubber for Opening Day on Friday.

“We have a good relationship with his agent and we’ve had productive dialogue,” said Levine, who happened to sit by Wilson on a flight from Phoenix to Dallas on Monday afternoon. “We certainly don’t feel it’s dead in the water.”

Levine said the team typically doesn’t complete many long-term deals during the season, but added that this was an unusual case in that Wilson will become a free agent at the end of the season.

“Things were trying to come together too late for it to really get worked out,” Wilson said. “A multi-year contract is a very complicated scenario.”

Follow Richard Durrett on Twitter: @espn_durrett