Where are the gay pro athletes?
Mitchell Layton
The sports world went into a mini-tizzy last week when Phoenix Suns president and CEO Rick Welts revealed that he’s gay. He gave an open, frank interview with ESPN on the subject shortly thereafter. Welts’ coming out is an important step forward, one that hastens the dialogue around an old question: When will the first active player from a Big Four (NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL) sport come out? The general vibe—one spurred by Welts and the almost simultaneous public declaration by former Villanova basketball star Will Sheridan—indicates that it will be soon. What’s remarkable is the fact this “open athlete” salon is a reality at all. We’ve got openly gay politicians, clergy, and (recently) service members—so why this enormous stigma surrounding the gay male professional athlete? Conventional wisdom suggests jocks are typically dumber and more pious than the general population, but that can’t be substantiated. The real issue probably comes down to cocks ’n’ balls. Players shower naked, and that’s a major source of insecurity for many straight men. It unsettles a macho culture and that’s a real problem for many; we’ve seen it before. The A.V. Club decided to read the tea leaves and rank the sport-by-sport likelihood of an inevitable Big Four outing. The method is unscientific by any measure, but let’s rub the queer crystal ball anyway.
National Basketball Association
The biggest boon to an NBA outing may have come in the wake of the Welts brouhaha. Former NBA great—and general loudmouth—Charles Barkley told ESPN that every basketballer has had gay teammates, calling doubters “stone-freakin’ idiots.” Here’s Sir Charles:
“It bothers me when I hear these reporters and jocks get on TV and say: ‘Oh, no guy can come out in a team sport. These guys would go crazy.’ First of all, quit telling me what I think. I’d rather have a gay guy who can play than a straight guy who can’t play.”
Barkley went on to snub the idea of locker-room rape fears, and even likened the discrimination gays face to discrimination against blacks.
The Association already has something of a trailblazer in John Amaechi, a former center who came out in 2007. There is, of course, plenty to suggest basketball won’t become the men’s chorus of professional sport. Former NBA point guard Tim Hardaway didn’t mince words shortly after the Amaechi bombshell, stating plainly, “I hate gay people.”
More recently, Kobe Bryant was fined $100,000 for mouthing “fucking faggot” after receiving a technical foul last month in a game against the Spurs. Still, the headwind provided by Amaechi, Welts, Sheridan, and Barkley means something. Those Jackie Robinson-esque steps have smoothed a path that will eventually aid the coming out of an active player.
Major League Baseball
Okay, so there have been notorious assholes. In 1999, Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker famously told Sports Illustrated that he’d never play in New York, fearing the prospect of sitting next to “some queer with AIDS” on the subway. It’s worth noting that the general emotional/mental stability of Rocker has long been questioned. John Smoltz, another former Braves pitcher, drew parallels between gay marriage and bestiality in 2004. And MLB journeyman Carl Everett—who recently didn’t object to domestic violence—drew the line at homosexuality, telling Maxim that “gays being gay is wrong” in 2005.
But MLB—more so than the rest of the Big Four—is a world game. It’s not rare for teams to field players from the United States, Canada, Japan, Mexico, and other parts of Central and South America. That lack of ethnic xenophobia lends some abstract hope to the likelihood of accepting a gay player. A recent poll by ESPN The Magazine found that players are pretty split on the subject, with only 8 percent saying having a gay teammate would be “apocalyptic.” Former ’70s outfielder Glenn Burke and ’80s/’90s utility player Billy Bean came out after their playing careers, so the water’s not entirely untested. His ardent Catholicism and Playboy Playmate wife notwithstanding, the jury’s apparently out on former catcher (baseball context, perv) Mike Piazza.
The National Football League
David Kopay, Roy Simmons, and former Viking Esera Tuaolo are NFL’ers who came out after their playing careers. But with its muscle-strapped, sweaty, hulking, grab-assing crop of tough guys, it’s unlikely we’ll see an openly gay pro football player anytime soon. Football is emblematic of all things masculine, a man’s man breed of sport that’s not fit for sissies. Unfortunately society is rife with effeminophobia. And that unjustified stereotype of limp-wristedness among gay men is as prevalent as ever. Just ask former NFL player Dave Meggyesy, who offered the following checklist of reasons to The Nation: “Male culture, fear of weakness, being different. Women being seen as second-class humans, and the association of homosexuality with the feminine or woman and weakness. Fear of their own bisexual or homosexual feelings, and often times confusing feelings of affection and sexual feelings.”
Mike Freeman at CBS Sports agrees, saying that it’ll be a “long, long time” before we see an openly gay NFL player. For now, the closest we got was Terrell Owens’ insinuation that his ex-teammate Jeff Garcia was gay. Here’s how the folksy/poetic Owens approached it to Playboy in 2004: “Like my boy tells me: ‘If it looks like a rat and smells like a rat, by golly, it is a rat.’”
The National Hockey League
If hockey has yet to experience even a former player coming out, that instance has not been publicized—unlike those cases with the rest of the Big Four. However, 42 percent of players think they’ve had gay teammates. Current New York Ranger Sean Avery recently came out in support of gay marriage, only to experience a shit storm thereafter. Not only does hockey ramp-up the violence and machismo of the NFL, there’s a certain culture that pervades the sport. Many NHL guys chew tobacco, drink, and fight; “puck bunnies” are an actual thing—it just seems to be more of a guy’s club than the other major sports. And if you’ve attended a high school with historically winning hockey team (not saying this author did), you know exactly what puck culture is all about.
