Most Annoying Sports Sounds of All Time
June 16, 2010— -- Millions of World Cup soccer fans have been putting up with the constant buzz made by the vuvuzela, a plastic horn blown by fans in South Africa.
The sound can be deafening and a major distraction, but it's also part of a long line of annoying sports sounds and chants.
Since the days of the Roman gladiators, spectators have cheered, booed and just made a racket. But certain sounds from recent sports history really stand out.
"It's like the old melodrama when you booed the bad guy," said Sheldon Anderson, a professor of history at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, who is currently writing a book on sports and international relations. "People feel like they are part of the game. They might not be able to play, but they can influence the outcome with boos, cheers or their ridiculous behavior."
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That said, Anderson notes that most sports sounds come and go depending on whether the home team needs support. The World Cup horn-blowing, however, continues regardless of who has the ball or what's happening on the field.
"There's been nothing, nothing like this in the sense that it never stops," he said. "It's just non-stop."
"The Blackhawks have their truck-horn when they score. But it's kind of amusing when it happens because it only happens a few times a night," Anderson added.
(There are now reports of anti-vuvuzela earplugs being sold to drown out the horns' noise.)
ABC News asked several sports experts what they would pick as the most annoying game-day sounds. And while this is in no way a complete list (feel free to add your own picks in the comments below) please remember that one fan's annoyance is another's joy.
First on our list, the Thunderstix, those inflatable plastic tubes that first became popular during the Anaheim Angels' climb to the 2002 World Series championship. They have since surfaced elsewhere. Let's put it this way: you bang them together and they make a lot of noise.
