By: Taedza Dangeni
Acceptance is a major key when it comes to sexuality and gender in today’s society. Today it is widely acknowledged that people are free to make their own choices when it comes to sexuality — even if many may not like that reality. However, how does this notion of acceptance play out when there are careers stereotyped by masculinity such as major league sports? Football, basketball, and baseball (to name a few) have long been the poster sports for the stereotypically “macho” personalities. So what happens when someone tips that balance by defying stereotypes? Is our society really as accepting of people’s lifestyles as we would like to think? The ‘coming out’ of many athletes has been documented as being riddled with mixed reactions and effects on their careers. Here are a few of those cases.
GLENN BURKE
Major League Baseball (MLB) (1976–9)
LA Dodgers, Oakland Athletics
Glenn Burke was a MLB player for the LA Dodgers when it became apparent that he was gay. Although he did not officially come out during his time playing in Major League Baseball, it was widely known that he was openly gay. According to ESPN, the team’s management and his teammates all knew of his sexual preferences. As such, he is considered to be the first openly gay player in MLB history.
However, unlike other people who have come out to their teams in recent years, his personal life strongly affected his career, especially when playing with the LA Dodgers. As an up-and-coming outfielder, Burke had been described as the next Willie Mays.
By 1978, however, it had become clear that the team’s management was not quite as accepting as Burke’s teammates were about his sexuality. According to Burke himself, he was once offered a $75,000 honeymoon by the team’s vice president if Burke would agree to get married — with the underlying instruction that it would be to a woman. His relationship with management was further jeopardized by his growing friendship with team manager Tommy Lasorda’s son who was openly gay even though his father never acknowledged his sexuality.
In 1978, as if to add insult to injury, Burke was traded to Oakland Athletics for the older Billy North — a controversial decision when comparing the players’ abilities. According to remarks later made by Burke’s former teammates, the move was heavily motivated by management’s disdain at having a gay man on the team. Outrageous as this may sound, it clearly illustrates how people felt about gay people in the ‘70s, especially in sports. Stigmas that connected gay men with AIDS and AIDS-related deaths at the time hurt Burke’s professional career, and may have kept him from reaching the potential many believed he had.
JASON COLLINS
National Basketball Association (NBA) (2001–14)
Played for seven different NBA organizations
In 2013, Jason Collins, a 13-season NBA veteran, became the first openly gay active athlete in the four major sporting leagues. According to Sports Illustrated, the athlete gained the courage to come out from the realization that life is not guaranteed after the events of the Boston Marathon bombing that year.
Collins’ announcement came almost 35 years after Burke’s ordeal and the reception of his announcement clearly illustrates how far some professional sports associations and the political landscapes has come with regard to the LGBTQ+ community. Collins received public support from athletes like Kobe Bryant and Steve Nash; official statements from two former presidents of the United States, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, were also issued expressing support for Collins and his decision. Although some people openly expressed some concerns regarding Collins’ coming out, it is significant to note that Collins’ career did not suffer in the wake of his announcement — if anything it gave him a spotlight he may not have found if reliant on just his NBA statistics. The support he received made him a leading force in the advancement of LGBTQ+ rights which is work he continued to focus on after retiring in 2014. In April 2014, Collins also featured on TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World.
MICHAEL SAM
National Football League (NFL) (2014)
Although Michael Sam’s experience as a gay man playing professional sports takes place around the same time as that of Collins, the outcome unfortunately more strongly resembles that of Burke’s. After completing a successful season in his last year of college football at the University of Missouri, Sam publicly announced that he was gay three months before the NFL draft.
Despite having won the Southeastern Conference Defensive Player of the Year award in 2013, Sam was only drafted in the seventh round by the St. Louis Rams. After the draft, the NFL and the Rams were praised by former president Barack Obama for their acceptance and progress in drafting an openly gay man to play in the NFL. However, it seems that this praise was premature as Sam was released by the team in the final round of cuts in order to retain Ethan Westbrook over Sam.
Sam was then recruited to be a part of the Dallas Cowboys’ practice squad but was promptly waived after only six weeks in order to open a roster spot for linebacker Troy Davis. It has been argued that the only reason he was released from both teams was due to his ability and had nothing to do with his sexuality. However, it is clear that his experience has not inspired much confidence in other possibly gay athletes in the NFL. With media sites reportedly focusing their scrutiny on mundane things like Sam’s showering habits instead of his performance on the field, it imposes barriers for others to follow in his footsteps.
It is clear from these three documented experiences that professional sports have a long way to go to be on the same wavelength with the LGBTQ+ community. Not all experiences have been bad, but it also cannot be ignored that even in this day and age, these bad experiences are still expected and sometimes accepted to be the norm. The general consensus should be that people are only assessed by what they do and not by their sexual preferences. The fact that we can question the morality of trading or cutting gay athletes shows that, despite what society would like to think about its advancement of equality, there is still a lot to be done to make sexuality invisible in decision-making in the sports world.
